Grief Looks Different for Everyone

A little over a month ago, one part of my family lost a close friend while another part of my family lost a family member. Both people I knew for a very long time. One I was close to and one I was not.

The family member I was close to, took his own life (according to what we were told) while the one I wasn’t close to died in a hospital. She had Diabetes and didn’t take care of herself. 

I won’t go into details of their passing as both are very personal and that’s not the point of my writing this post.

Since the passing of the close friend of the family, who was essentially family - let me make that very clear - I have tried to write about my feelings regarding it in my personal journal. 

I couldn’t.

Then I thought about writing this post.

But until now, I just couldn’t. 

It seemed that I had lost all desire to write even for the little things in either a blog post or my personal journal. It has been a rough time. I filled that time with spending more time with my sons but also gaming and making other content that didn’t involve me focusing on my own personal feelings.

Then life just got very busy. Hectic even. I picked up the slack that one of the people who passed has filled. Then my oldest started a mid-semester Biology class that has been overwhelming and stressful (but he’s good now). 

All the while, my family and I are still just going about our lives and taking one day at a time. Life has an awfully funny way of continuing as if no one died.

Then I am reminded how long it took me to grieve for two other people years ago. 

Every grief is different. Every person is different. 

Yet, life always finds a way to move forward.

I was depressed for a while after and I wondered if the depression was a result of some trauma coming back into my psyche or if the depression was part of the grieving process.

For me, it was both. I won’t go into it here though as it would compel me to speak on some details of one of the people and I won’t do that.

What I will say is that I simply checked out. I felt almost numb but when I started thinking about certain things, it kept me up at night. I had a few flashbacks and nightmares.

Depression is a part of the grieving process. So I felt that sadness for the loss but I also felt some old issues come up for me that caused something deeper to happen.

The checking out was part of that. I didn’t completely disassociate - as was my M.O. in the past when my PTSD was really bad - but I checked out of certain things. I watched a lot of mindless T.V so that I wouldn’t have to think too hard or at all.

I played games that kept my mind occupied enough to not think about the sadness and guilt I was feeling.

I smiled and felt guilty for it. I laughed and felt ashamed. 

I had to convince myself that it was okay to smile and laugh even while at the same time, I was telling myself I shouldn’t be smiling and laughing.

My family and I are finally finding our bearings and getting back to normal. Things are getting better but we still feel sad from time to time.

Grieving takes time. The healing takes time. And that looks different for everyone, every situation, every loss. 

I am still struggling with writing. It feels like I’ve lost the desire to write so the frequency of my blog posts will drop.

I will write from time to time and I will probably focus more on gaming posts but I will still try.

That’s all I can do.

Thanks so much for reading!