Tag: grief

062b – grief is not generous

Everything feels a little different now. The news of Matthew Perry’s death is hitting hard. I read the news in the morning and went back to sleep, hoping I’d wake up to a different reality. 

I rarely feel this way about celebrity deaths (Matt Haig states the same sentiment in one of his very fresh posts). In fact he’s already expressed some of the things I’m feeling today / right now so maybe this is repetitive to anyone’s who’s reading this. But it doesn’t matter. 

I rarely feel this way about celebrity deaths but maybe Friends was different. Even when I’d made real, made-to-last friendship bonds, Friends was still precious. Our friendships deepened over long character and episode discussions and many, many rewatches of them. 

In school, I’d relate to Chandler a lot. 

This May, I saw the reunion movie (after a long break from the series) on a flight to Bangalore, which I was on to visit my college friends, after a sufficiently long gap. I told them when I met them how fitting it was that we (well, most of us anyway) were all obsessed with this show during college and now here I was watching the reunion movie almost a decade later since we first became friends.

It’s all a lot. 

I know a lot of people I know are feeling a lot. But I don’t know why that’s not making any of this easier. 

I suppose grief has a way of taking all your attention, all your resources. Grief is not generous, I’m realising. 

There’s also other contexts of the world (or our own personal lives, in many cases) that we cannot ignore. But we must grieve each story, each loss: whether we do it individually or separately is upto the feeler of said feelings.  

Or maybe “big specific deaths” also bring into focus the fragility of life. You get tense about the things you haven’t done, the stories you haven’t told, the people you haven’t spent enough time with, the grudges you haven’t let go of yet, the nice things you haven’t said to the people you want to appreciate, all of that. And yet, will you change? Will you take the courage to do even a little bit of everything you haven’t done? I’m going to do it. I’m going to write love-letters (or e-mails) to all the important people in my life today. Or at least, as many as I can. 

October seems like it’s becoming the season of goodbyes. 

Wake me up when October ends, I think? 

028a – are you up to speed?

Haven’t posted in a while, I start things but don’t end up completing them. This is definitely going to be a good old word-vomit. Hoping to complete it tonight. Things have been busy, somehow. I moved to my own place a few weeks back and though it’s all been nothing short of spectacular, it’s definitely also been a little lonelier, if I’m being honest. I did expect a little bit of that to happen, and I’d promised myself I’d have some structures in place to not let it get out of hand. Structures like a minimum of two social activities per week (one during the week and one on the weekend), and mostly – I’ve been abiding by that. But looks like I might need three of those? Or I might need the two to be really fulfilling… 

Got my second shot of the Pfizer vaccine a couple days ago and had a high fever as a side effect. Again – this was something expected but I’d forgotten what it feels like, don’t think I’ve had a fever in the last two years (hurrah!), so it was definitely very draining, exhausting.  

Also been feeling a little bit anxious here and there. Part of me feels like it’s because I haven’t written in a while. Biweekly summaries of “what’s been up” have been quite helpful in the recent past, and even though I’ve been catching up with people and giving them a bit of all of this – it’s not the same as doing it for (?) myself. I think it’s because when there’s other people involved – new things sometimes get added up. Probably things like – feelings about their reactions, their own updates, this, that. 

I think most of the anxiety and the fog is because of the state of the pandemic back home – the second wave hit India really hard and pretty much everyone I know is or has been suffering – either directly or through families. My grandfather passed away too, and though he lived a long, full life and it had to happen one way or the other, it’s been weird to grieve while I’m away from the rest of my family. It’s been weird to half-heartedly grieve, since I know most of it will hit me only when I visit his home. That’s where most of him resides, for me, and I can’t fully feel or process his absence until I actually go there. And I don’t really know when I’ll get to go, considering how unsafe it’d be to travel to India right now. 

Thankfully work’s not been too stressful the last couple weeks. I managed to get a decent amount of time for many of my creative pursuits, I’m recording a lot of music, doing a decent bit of photography, meeting new people – enjoying it a lot. Want to ensure I keep working hard enough to sustain this job. I see the benefits of it from time to time. 

Well, looks like we’re done. I want to post something I wrote the morning I heard about baba’s death, but maybe I’ll wrap it up around some context and post it soon. 

020a – directives for the blues

Let yourself grieve. Take the time out to look at withering plants and cloudy days. To read worn-out books and eat left-overs. Allow yourself to taste your tears and feel your sobs. It doesn’t make you small, it doesn’t make you big. It makes you you and that’s all there is.

You don’t have to ignore that heavy feeling in your stomach, or your chest. You don’t have to suppress the shivers and trembles that bequeath your flesh. You don’t have to wipe your clammy hands, you don’t have to quieten your sniffles. You don’t have to be mature or strong-headed. You don’t owe that to anyone. You can listen to the child in you, you can reach out to the child in you. You can tell them everything they never had the pleasure of hearing. Recount your failures, recount your mistakes, recount your losses, there’s no harm in it.
You don’t have to respond to or engage with all the “negative” thoughts but you don’t have to shun them out either. When you call them negative you judge a part of you that you have no control over. You don’t have to drive them away for no reason at all. After all, they’re (of) human too. 

Let yourself cradle the pieces of your broken heart. Honor the ones that won’t go back in anymore. Maybe bury them in the sand or wash them off in the sea, whatever floats your boat. Bid them farewell, they did good. Tell them how the rest of your heart will be with them sooner or later. But for now it needs to live on.
It needs to live on and it can’t carry around the dangling, broken pieces anymore. And for you to release them, you need to hold them. And for you to hold them, you need to look at them, acknowledge them. And for you to acknowledge them, you need to face your grief.

So let yourself face your grief. Let yourself look at happiness and feel wistful. There’s no hurry, you’ll find it when you’re supposed to. Let yourself be surrounded by love and friendship and allow it to not lift your spirits, if it doesn’t. Take the time out to play minor chords and smoke that cigarette. Take the time out to take tests you might fail at. Take the time out to meet people who’re going to disappoint you. Let yourself taste the cardboard of expensive pizza. The bitterness of expensive coffee. Let yourself feel the elusivity of attractive people. Of attractive opportunities. Let yourself see the dependency of love. The expectations of friendships. The attachment of comfort.

Allow the rain to be a damper on your plans, allow the sun to leave sooner than it was supposed to. Allow yourself to cry over all of it anyway.  

Take the time out to grieve, so you don’t make the mistake of passing it on. 

008a – appreciation for the sea

She stands at the edge of the pier, staring into the water the surface of which glistens brightly under the evening sky. She wishes the waves would meet her eyes and bring answers to questions she doesn’t know she has. Another lost soul makes its way to where she stands, but she doesn’t turn around – she fears she’ll see herself in them. She doesn’t turn around, she fears she might have to acknowledge their presence, she’s not done grieving the lost ones yet. She stares into the sea, hoping it’s her desperation that’s making it talk, and not the moon that’s barely visible tonight.

She hears voices float towards her from a little far away, a family of four out for fun, out practicing, trying to catch fish. She hears the voices but she doesn’t pay attention to them, she’s hoping the ripples and the waves will somehow fuse to make the sound that she really wants to hear. The sounds of the lost ones.

She’s been coming here for the last seven days, seeking and saying goodbye at the same time. She fears being recognized. She thinks if someone saw her twice they’d know what was happening, they’d know she’s been grieving. She’s shared her grief with everyone who’s listened, yet tonight she doesn’t want to be seen. Not unless that can bring her comfort.

She’s listened to Atlas Hands for hours and she’s found comfort in the idea of a shared external world. She cannot reach the moon or the stars but she can get pretty close to the sea. This is the first time in years she’s glad she lives near the water. This is the first time she’s fully appreciated the sea and all it can be and everything it can mean.

She is falling in love again. She is transferring her love for another heart into the sea. She tries to draw the meaning out of the memories and pour it all out into the sea, where it can dissolve with the water and free her a little bit. She’s been doing this for seven days, or seventy, she’s not really sure.

She starts making her way back to her house, there’s real life she needs to get back to. She doesn’t really want to go back, it’s peaceful outside. There’s a homeless man sleeping near a sidewalk, she wonders if she’d ever survive a life like that. She sees a group of homeless men talking and laughing. She wonders if, in this moment, they’re happier than she feels. She pays attention to people on her way back. She feels drawn to them, in ways she can’t always describe to other people. She moves slowly, as if in a movie. Everything she perceives feels beautiful. Every noise musical, every movement graceful. 

She’s making room for the new ones and she doesn’t know it yet. She doesn’t know she’ll be thinking about this night a couple months later from now. She’s found meaning in life all by herself and she doesn’t know it yet. 

—

Credits: 1 2 3