“are you okay”

It’s been hard to write because I’m embarrassed. I imagined grief to be an arc that would at some point return to baseline and life would resume. As the pain abated over the last month and the physical symptoms eased I felt optimistic that I could pick up the life I had temporarily set down as I grieved the loss of my mother. Unfortunately, unexpectedly, the “I” I thought I was was no longer there.

It’s been hard to write because this experience has been hard to describe. I look the same. My home is the same. My job continues, but everything is different. I struggle to cook or order food because I don’t know what I’ll like. The strong food cravings I’ve always had have disappeared. Each meal is a blank slate, a new experiment. Only it doesn’t feel playful and exciting because I remember a past where I knew what I’d enjoy and long for it. This change is unwelcome and unsettling. I’m starting from scratch.

It’s hard to make plans because I don’t know what I’ll feel like doing, if I’ll be up for talking, if I’ll want to move or be still. I used to be able to anticipate my needs and desires and construct a calendar to meet them. More honestly, I used to be swept in a tidal wave of momentum and obligations and was overcommitted to things I told myself were the building blocks of my life. I go out and smile, trying to appear to be a person enjoying themselves. My dear friends mouth to me “are you okay?” and I am, but I’m also not.

I’m embarrassed grief is hitting me so hard. It’s only been four months, but it feels like an eternity. An internalized voice says I “should” be feeling better, be back to work, be moving forward. It’s hard to not judge myself against that unconscious and inhumane bar.

Grief isn’t a period of mourning, but a process of redefinition in my relationship with my mother, my image of who she was, and myself. I am not who I was before this happened. The truth is that I wasn’t who I was then, either. In losing my mother I can see how much of my personality was constructed in reaction to her to keep me safe.

I am so many things I told myself I wasn’t. Many of them sweet, tender things. Grief is calling me to admit, maybe for the first time, how much I need people, how deeply I want to feel cared for, how much I want love. In that I’m confronting beliefs around whether or not I can ask for those things, if I deserve them.

I feel more lost than I have ever felt, but the self that I am losing isn’t one I’m entirely sad to lose. I grasp for it nonetheless, but it’s too far gone. It’s profoundly unsettling. I feel like a blind man waking up only to find everything in the house has been moved. The structure is the same, but nothing is where I left it.