It’s going to be 5 years to the day. Tuesday January 5th, 2016. There’s something about it that feels stronger this year, scarier. Flashbacks are more intense, and my anxiety is worlds apart from what I feel on a semi regular basis. Sadness comes and goes, and isn’t ever present as it once was, sure. But this feeling — I can’t describe it well enough.
It’s like someone ripped out my heart from my chest and haphazardly shoved it back in. It sounds cliché, but it’s true. Just writing this is making my whole body tremble with chills and I’m breaking out in a cold sweat. It’s not about looking up at the sky and praying to anything or anyone that might be up there to bring him back. It’s about learning how to live with this huge fucking hole. In my life, my chest, my identity as a woman.
No dad to walk me down the aisle.
No dad to be there at my graduation.
No dad to hold my hand when I’m scared.
No dad to help me move homes.
No dad to hold my future child.
No dad to call on Father’s Day.
Therapy has been my friend for a long while. Psychology has been my field of study. But textbooks and journaling aren’t equal with a manual for life. Or grief and loss. Time is. I’ve been told this many times before, I’ve said it to myself, I’ve said it to other sweet souls who have experienced the same loss as me. Time is both our enemy and our friend.
Getting through the loss of someone so close to you, so important, so vital to your existence — one half of what made me — is something that no matter how many times it is written about, will never be easier to handle when the time comes. One of the most important people to me who was suffering this loss alongside me, every fucking step of the way, shared the most calming and terrifying words I have ever heard.
“Sometimes, people won’t understand. They will say the wrong thing, they won’t have the energy, or the compassion, or their heart in the right place. And you will have to sit alone in your room at all hours of the day or night and cry. You will have to hug yourself mentally and physically and comfort yourself. And that is when you will get through it on your own. That is where you get stronger.”
A friend that meant everything to me told me something that I never expected, he said:
“you’ll see now that this is where your life begins.”
I have never been more utterly perplexed from a single sentence. I trusted he knew what he was saying but we never talked about it again. And I waited. I waited for the moment where both those conversations would resonate with me, and I would understand what they meant. It took me years. But I understand now.
You are all you have at the end of the day, and while social support is important, the best gift you can give yourself is embracing your shattered pieces when you feel like the world will be dark and cloudy forever and giving yourself the space to take your time. To get through it and to heal on your terms, as silently or as loud as you need to.
When your biggest safety net is jerked out from under you and you feel like you are free falling from 40,000 feet in the sky, you are forced to land. You might break a leg, you might stay in the grass for a few hours, days or weeks. But you will land, and eventually, you will get back up. And when you look at yourself in the mirror and see those red, puffy eyes staring back at you, whether it’s been years or days or months since you fell, you will realise that you have yourself for life, and that is enough. And when you discover that internal strength, that courage, and bravery, you will see that life truly does begin now. Because this is when you were forced to depend on yourself. But you still fucking survived.