grief is different this time

Content Advisory: death, grief, illness

I am so over 2025. She can pack up. I will pay for all her checked bags. Extra legroom. At this point I am willing to pay for first class. As long as that ticket is one-way and we never have to see her again.

This year has tossed me all around and the last few months have me feeling like I’ve been washed in one of those washing machines that says there are five minutes left but then it spins for another fifteen minutes.

Truth be told the last decade has really felt like the last fifteen minutes of a spin cycle of a death washing machine. I’ve lost a lot of people that I love. My friends and I use to joke that we were like a season of Grey’s Anatomy. Someone was always dying.

The one thing that was true about each person that died was that their death was so final. So clear. That was part of what made it so devastating. Obviously, there were moments of bargaining or denial, but for me, the weight of grief was often the heaviest when I thought about the finality of their deaths.

For the past months, I have been navigating some stupid and absurd chronic pain. I’m not sure of it’s origin (I have some ideas…). I’m not sure if I’ll get better. I’m still trying to figure out what (if anything) makes it worse. I’ve seen this doctor and that doctor. I’m going to see another doctor. It’s invisible. If you saw me on the street you would have no idea. Just like when someone dies. You still go to the supermarket. You still ride the bus. And the people around you don’t know what’s happened.

And yet - your world has radically changed. My world has radically changed. And the grief, this time, it feels so unmanageable. How long will I be like this? The rest of my life? 2 months? Will there end up being a simple solution? Or not?

Matter of fact — what am I even grieving?????!!!!!!

The loss of the ability to do the things that I love? The uncertainty? The origin of how this might have all started?

I’m not even sure how to grieve because it feels like it’s always changing. How much should I be grieving? Will I get worse and will there be more to lose? Will I get better and then get worse again? That has been a particularly cruel part of this journey. The fleeting moments where I almost know my body again. Only for it to all evaporate in another cycle of symptoms before I even have a chance to say hello.

The grief is different this time. And still in many ways it’s the same. It comes in waves. It inserts itself into the most mundane of things. And it’s teaching me more about myself than I ever thought possible (which by the way I would love a pause, potentially, on learning things about myself).

And so here we are. Grief, alongside love, has been my greatest teacher. I would love to skip this part of the class and get on with life. But that’s not possible right now. So. I guess I’ve got to learn what grief looks like this time.

All my love. Xoxo.

Dutch