This Is What Getting Over Death Feels Like

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A year ago I felt trapped. Caged within my own psyche that defined my behavior for months, I felt confused, anxious and insecure. Mundane tasks left me drained and overwhelmed unable to carry through. Even my professional standing suffered because of it.

When my very involved father passed away, things were tough on my family. He had been sick and the entire family was dedicated to making him comfortable, because there really was no way around his illness. We knew the inevitable had to happen. It was only about time.

The problem was not accepting that he was gone but my reaction following his death. It was tough to accept his absence but I told myself that life goes on; that his suffering ended and there was little that we could do to prevent that; however it didn’t stop my subconscious or my body from grieving.

I had always been good at my job, yet this time around I was failing miserably without any intention or clue as to what I was doing in the first place. Empty spaces terrified me, deadlines made me anxious and domesticity frustrated me. I guess tiny bouts of OCD kicked in as well. Maybe I was going through depression or anxiety or generally that’s what grieving was like for me, which only asserts the notion that there is no one way of dealing with grief.

It was challenging to even talk about it at first, to voice it out loud. Despite having great friends and family who supported us the whole time, it felt like we were being coddled and suddenly everyone we knew was interested in our lives, or rather running it.

Let me just point out how insanely WRONG that is.

You don’t barge into someone life trying to run it, that’s just messed up. Let grieving be just that, time to heal, time to move past the insanely horrible thing that happened and get past it in the healthiest way possible.

A year later, things are settling in, I’m not spending days crying in the shower or turning into the Incredible Hulk over mundane matters. Sure, my schedule makes me nervous at times and sometimes talking to people about my grief still puts me on edge.

But in all fairness who defines these rules anyway?

Despite everything, I think grief is not something you can quantify with time, you can’t calculate the amount of time it’ll take for you to get over something that happened or the absence of someone important. No one can or should say otherwise.

It was something that happened to you. It is something you will get past, maybe not a year later, maybe not ever, but who on earth is asking you to keep track anyway?