I realise that my posts might be difficult to read at times, and think it's important that they all come with a 'trigger warning'. I'm speaking very openly and without much of a filter, so please only read this if you feel able to, and be aware that I talk about some very difficult feelings and experiences in an honest and raw way. I hope that you can share this journey with me, but as always, look after yourself first.
I’m not planning on doing this blog as a weekly thing, but it seems like the weekends are a good time for reflection at the moment, when the weekdays can feel quite overwhelming and full. I’m going to start and end with a quote from a writer that I love, Rupi Kaur. I actually used to send Jordan some of her poems (lots are about love and healing)- not really his thing but think he appreciated the sentiment! You may think this first one sounds a little dark, but hopefully through the post it’ll make sense why I relate to it at the moment. It comes from a chapter called ‘Healing’ in one of her books:
“perhaps
I don’t deserve
nice things
cause I am paying
for sins I don’t
remember”
If you’ve lost someone to suicide, you may have had times where you’ve felt like you don’t deserve to live, because you didn’t save your loved one. You may also have not felt like this, but I definitely have and still do. This week has been challenging for me for that reason (among others as you can imagine). In the ‘beginning’ (beginning referring to days/weeks after), I felt like I didn’t deserve anything. I didn’t deserve to sleep, eat, exercise, or anything else for that matter. I lay awake going over and over everything in my mind; sleep rarely came, and when it did, nightmares ensued. People asked what I wanted to eat, and all I wanted was horrible food that tasted bad, because I didn’t deserve to eat food, to nourish my living body, to enjoy anything. Eating nice food actually made me feel sad and guilty.
People asked if I might feel like doing yoga- now this was the most self-indulgent thing I could think of doing. To give MYSELF that much time, energy and care was just unthinkable. I did not feel deserving of such a privilege when Jordan had lost his life. I cried to a friend a couple of days before Jordan’s funeral, telling her that I didn’t even deserve to be feeling sad.
It makes me feel really heavy to look back at that. I want to bundle myself up and soothe me like a baby. Luckily, I had friends and family who did this for me. I thought that there must be something wrong with me, I must deserve the pain I was being served.
Those who know me very well know that I struggled with disordered eating, mainly during my early twenties. I wasn’t aware of it at the time; I thought I was super healthy and fit. But my ribs were poking through, my arms looked like they could snap at any moment. Later I realised that I was exerting control during a time where my life felt quite scary. I’d been through a lot and hadn’t really had the emotional capacity to deal with it at the time, putting it all in a little box and leaving it to pour out later on. I think deep down, I felt like I might have deserved some of the bad things that had happened in my life and therefore restricted my diet and upped my exercise as punishment. I remember thinking I was ‘good’ at dieting and exercising, that I had ‘strong willpower’ because I only ate 800 calories a day. I got my self-worth from punishing my body and believing I was mentally strong for being so cruel to myself. I remember feeling quite proud that my BMI deemed me ‘underweight’ and at one point, in the range for anorexia. I am sad for that version of me now, because she didn’t deserve that.
I think a huge part of who I am involves investing my energy and love into other people, sometimes meaning saving little to give to myself. The past few years, I’ve really worked on this. I love yoga; it helps me to practice self-compassion and quietens down my inner bully a lot. After losing Jord, It took me a little while to start to attempt activities to nourish myself again. Luckily, friends and family cooked for me and gave me lots of love and care when I couldn’t give this to myself. They encouraged me to do things again, even though I really didn’t want to at times. I kind of knew I had to at some point, and hoped that over time it might feel ‘less wrong’ to do things for myself.
I also remember feeling so confused when people said they were sad for ME. “Don’t be sad for me, be sad for Jordan and all that he’s been through”. I was genuinely perplexed because I felt undeserving of sympathy. I was so focused on making arrangements with Jord’s family, all of us together trying to do what needed to be done, and processing the trauma of losing Jord in this way, I didn’t have much space to think about what might happen after this period. I remember thinking it would be worse, even though it kind of seemed like it could never get any worse. I hadn’t begun to think about the future without Jordan, I didn’t see myself as having a life, and I didn’t want to. Some days I wanted to throw my life in the bin, just give it away and say that I can’t do it. As the cloud of shock and trauma started to lift slightly, I began thinking about the future, not our future, but my future. Fear crept in.
Before losing Jordan, I lived in the moment as much as possible. I didn’t look too far ahead or try to plan my life; I already knew that life was uncertain and unpredictable. Jordan also found it difficult to look to the future, which is common with depression. We have so much pressure on us to do certain things by a certain age, to be a certain way. We live in a world where we’re constantly striving for things, even if they don’t make us happy, and to me it’s a little bonkers (even though I do it myself). So, I generally felt okay with taking life as it came and took pleasure in the small things, which in recent years mainly involved Jordan. I felt the most content I had ever been in my life, I felt okay not knowing what would happen in the future, because we would be together and we would figure it out.
Now, I’m mourning the loss of Jordan, of his life, whilst also mourning our anticipated life, my life.
When I was 25, I moved to a new city, I felt so free, and embraced the uncertainty of what was to come. It was exciting, not terrifying. I’d made a huge choice about my life, taken a risk, and I felt amazing for it. Now, I haven’t had any say in the matter, my life is changing beyond belief and I didn’t choose any of it. I have to make choices now, but they’re forced choices. It’s not exciting, the world isn’t my oyster, and the options constantly feel narrow.
I wrote this a while back on my phone one evening, and it’s felt very relevant this week:
“How do you learn to walk again, when the rug has been pulled from under your feet, and the floor underneath is so slippery?”
I’m out of my depth; I once knew how to rebuild my life, how to ‘start again’ and embrace opportunities. I’m trying to do this in practice, but I don’t feel that I’m doing it in theory. As a person whose baseline is generally happy, optimistic, and open, it’s pretty terrifying to feel unhappy for what feels like such a long time, and never know whether it’ll get any better. I found a little hope this week when someone who I have just met at work (virtually of course) told me that I seemed like such a friendly and positive person. It made me feel like ‘I’ might still be in there somewhere beneath my grief and fear. In fact, I know I am.
I also had a conversation with a friend, who said that just being human and alive means that we deserve to live. This really helped me, as I agree. Therefore, I deserve to live too.
I feel like Jordan would be shouting at me if he heard some of these thoughts- he would absolutely say that I deserve to live and be happy. I know that he would want me to live a rich, full and meaningful life and would hate that I am even questioning this. This allows me to have some hope for myself too.
When comparing how I felt 4 months ago, to where I am now, things have changed massively. I do yoga every day (okay some days I still can’t be bothered but most days, hey, we’re all human?!). I make nice food, and enjoy it. I definitely enjoy a glass of wine. I have laughed with friends. I spend quality time with my loving parents. I am gradually getting back into work. These are small steps, but feelings do change. Something I advocate for a lot in my work is that emotional states are temporary. They are constantly changing and passing. This lockdown is forcing me to sit with my difficult thoughts and feelings more than I probably would have if it weren’t for covid. I do think it’s making me feel worse in the moment to sit with them, and to not have my amazing friends around me. But, maybe this time of feeling is allowing me space to heal. Because I do think that we have to open up to our pain, allow it in and nurture it. I hope that by doing this, I can rebuild my life and have happiness again in the future. I continue to work on my own healing and know I have a lot more to give to the world. So, I’m going to end with a poem about healing:
“stay strong through your pain
grow flowers from it
you have helped me
grow flowers out of mine so
bloom beautifully
dangerously
loudly
bloom softly
however you need
just bloom”