16/12/20
I've titled this post "what the fuck?" because to me, this summarises my experience of grief so far. Most days I have those moments of just thinking- WHAT THE FUCK? about various things. I'm sure if you've experienced grief (as we all do at some point in life), you will relate...
14/12/20
I wrote this last Wednesday, followed by an evening of intense anxiety and panic. It was back, that horrible constant sinking feeling, that feeling of someone sitting on my chest. I felt like my mind had been hijacked, and there really was no getting me out of it. I still want to share what I had to share, but as ever, trying to be as honest as possible with what I share. I just hope it helps anyone else who has experienced/is experiencing this in relation to trauma and grief.
I always loved December, and Christmas time generally. But yesterday in the supermarket doing my food shop I felt like I was going to have a panic attack in the aisle. Being surrounded by people seeming so happy, doing their Christmas food shop, with their families, Christmas music playing etc was so overwhelming. I felt so angry with people for being happy, and felt like I might punch someone (man spending a long time choosing his cheese selection, you are on my list). I don’t like this feeling, because it makes me feel like an awful bitter person. But, I get it. It’s normal to feel like that right now. I feel different today, which reminds me that feelings pass. I speak about this daily with people at work, and yet, it’s so hard to remind myself of that when intense feelings come about.
Don’t laugh at me, because maybe it’s not the coolest thing in the world to admit. BUT I really love Taylor Swift, and she’s bought out two amazing 'folky' albums this year. I want to share a lyric from one of her songs, which feels relatable right now.
“Hey December
Guess I’m feeling unmoored Can’t remember
What I used to fight for
I rewind the tape but all it does is pause
On the very moment, all was lost
Sending signals
To be double-crossed “
So anyway, back to last Wednesday…
09/12/20
I’ve been writing a lot today, but weirdly, I felt like I wanted to keep writing. I guess I’ve focused a lot on others today, and felt like maybe I wanted to write something for me (or maybe I’m feeling the gap now in my time that was previously taken up by thesis writing).
I’ve been writing therapy-ending letters for my clients, and it’s such an amazing experience reflecting on a long time of working with someone, knowing you’ve sat alongside them while they work through some pretty horrendous things. Getting back into work this week after a week off has reminded me of why I do this job, and how important it is to me. A client told me yesterday that I feel like family to him, and it was really emotional, but also so meaningful and special to hear.
Grief is so strange. I really under-estimated how fucking awful it was before, and I guess I’d never really had to think about it much (luckily). I’d lost grandparents before losing Jordan, and although this was sad and painful, it was the natural process of life and death, losing someone at an age where they’d lived a long life. My experience of that grief was having an intense period of sadness for days/weeks, and then life moving forward. I think about them now and then, talk about them with my family, remember little things that they used to do etc. But I don’t miss them in my every day life, because my every day life was separate from them in many ways, and it was pre-adulthood. Jordan WAS my every day life. Yes, I had my life before Jordan, but for over two years, my life revolved around him, as it does when you’re in a loving relationship. Losing your partner changes every single thing about your life. It changes the way you eat, what you eat, when you go to bed, where you sleep, how you spend your weekends, who you spend time with, where you live, where you do your food shopping…. I could go on, but you get the gist (probably spoken about this before too, so sorry for any repetition). Losing Jordan is a prolonged pain that I have to learn to live my life around, which is different from the grief I’ve personally experienced before. At this point in time, living through a global pandemic, it feels pretty hard to grow your life around grief, which makes it all the more shitty.
When I lost Jordan, I lost myself too. I don’t know how to explain this (and may have even mentioned before), but the moment I realised that Jordan was dead, I had this overwhelming sensation that I was going to die too. It must have been panic, but it was like I was actually going to disintegrate right there. It was like I was watching what was happening, but it wasn’t actually me.
It feels like years ago that I last saw Jordan, but also yesterday that he died. As we approached the one-year mark last week, I was feeling ‘okay’, and this made me feel anxious in itself. I took the week off work to prepare myself, I remembered that the ‘build up’ tends to be worse (as it has been on other significant dates this year) than the day itself and I planned loads of jobs to keep busy. It really felt okay in the days before, I had space to reflect and cry, but I also had space to do things for myself, and to do jobs I’d been putting off. I had therapy the night before, and although I cried a lot, I felt that I was coping well, and that my head was clear going into the day. I could do this.
The one-year mark (I’m really trying to avoid the word anniversary as it just doesn’t fit, but I don’t think anyone has come up with a better word for it yet?) was more awful than I’d imagined. I woke up that morning, sat on the edge of the bed, and cried. I couldn’t stop. It was just coming. I felt sick. I went into the bathroom and I remembered the day after Jordan died, being in that same bathroom and washing my hands. I remember so clearly focusing on the sensation of the water on my hands, and realising that I was actually still alive. My mind transported me back to that day and I felt like I was losing Jordan all over again. I know every single day since 4th December 2019, I’ve woken up knowing that Jordan is dead; but this was different, it felt so fresh again, and I didn’t expect it to. It totally threw me, which I know sounds a bit stupid, but it really did. I went for a very stompy walk by myself and listened to a podcast on grief (Griefcast, highly recommend), and I actually smiled because it was uplifting at points. I tried to avoid thinking about what time of day it was, and reminded myself that today was another day without Jordan, I didn’t need to torture myself by thinking about this exact minute last year. But at different points throughout the day, I felt like a story was playing in my head that only I could see. I felt that feeling again, like I’d just disintegrate at some point, how could I not? I felt scared of my own mind, and what it was doing to me- would I go ‘backwards’ now? Was this day going to ‘ruin’ the progress I’d made by bringing up everything that happened? I wanted it all to go away, and I absolutely drank too much that evening (which was always going to happen for me). On a lighter note, I was apparently sleep talking very loudly after passing out fully clothed on the bed at around 11pm (not cool…)
I woke up the next morning and felt such a strong feeling of dread (yes, the hangover didn’t help). I felt so shaken by how awful the day had been, and again was filled with all of the anxieties about how I’d ever be ‘okay’ again and feeling that the day had set me back. I was so hard on myself, “IT’S BEEN A YEAR AND YOU’RE STILL GOING OVER THIS STUFF?”, “PEOPLE WILL START TO BE SICK OF YOU BEING SAD SOON” etc etc. I told myself I needed to pull myself together, I ‘should’ be coping better. I managed to talk it out a bit and realised how I was feeling was okay and normal, it just terrified me. But really, a year is such a short space of time. Also, I was putting these judgements on myself, of course no-one expects me to just 'be okay' now- what does that even mean anyway?
I think acknowledging that it has been a year since Jordan died made it really real for me. My life has changed so much in a year, and as well as grieving for Jordan and processing the trauma of this loss, I’m also processing everything that has happened for me in this year. I see that some of it is 'positive', which also makes me sad. This isn’t how I wanted to buy my first home, and it’s not how I wanted to finish my doctorate. This isn’t how I wanted to be spending my evenings, and I didn’t expect to be spending this amount of time on my own.
I’ve always sort of seen grieving for Jordan and the trauma of how we lost him as two separate things, and I think the last year has been a lot about the trauma of losing Jordan. But actually, the more I go along in this journey, the more I realise that nothing is separate. Every aspect of Jordan’s life and death is intertwined with every aspect of my life now. I lost myself, I found bits of it again under the grief rubble, then I lost bits again, I built new bits and so on. I am rebuilding, despite bits of me being knocked down again at different times.
Missing Jordan and the person he is (was? Tenses are very confusing these days) is horrendous, and it brings sadness to my door every day. In my mind he is still so real and alive, so how can he not be right in front of me? Will he just walk through the door in a second? What gets to me more than my own grief and pain, is the fact that he did not get to live a long and happy life, as I believe he deserved. As his partner, albeit for a pretty short period of time, I did everything in my power to bring him happiness and joy. I loved him unconditionally and told him often how incredible I thought he was. It was a bit like flooding myself, but last night I got out the note that Jordan left me, along with all of the cards we’d written to each other. I felt such relief reading them, reminding myself of the love that we showed each other, and this retriggered memories of the weeks before he died that reminded me of the things I DID do whereas my mind likes to constantly remind me of the things I feel I didn’t do, or ‘should’ have done. Although those thoughts and feelings around guilt and responsibility are still there for me at times, I’m more able to let them in now and compassionately remind myself that they are not true. I know that those thoughts and feelings are a reflection of the fact that I didn’t want this to happen, because I cared about and loved Jordan with all of my heart. Jordan didn’t do this because he wasn’t loved, that’s so clear from all of the amazing love, care and support that his family and friends showed him too.
Researchers apparently say that we overestimate our sense of responsibility when someone dies by suicide, because it’s too difficult for our brain to accept how little control we actually have. If you didn’t want something to happen, you naturally search for what you did or didn’t do. I felt like having these thoughts again quite strongly meant that I’d taken a ‘step back’, but I’ve since realised that there’s no such thing, and I accept that this is something I’m still working through and always will be.
As painful as it is that Jordan could no longer continue with his journey in this life, and as much as we miss him, I hold onto the fact that he does live within me. Jordan would comment on how he loved how I loved life, and would laugh at the silly every day things that I enjoyed doing. So although sometimes I don’t feel that I ‘should’ be happy (I think you can see here how unhelpful ‘shoulds’ are), I know that I have to continue on in whatever way I know how in order to honour Jordan’s wishes for me. I can’t lose that part of me that he loved, and although sometimes the rubble of grief covers those parts of me up, I know that all of me is still under there, along with some new bits that I’m still developing.