Grief: The Devastating Truths Behind The Tears.
Sometimes we lose someone who may not have been that close to us, yet we think they should have been. Those ties were supposed to bind, but didn’t.
Instead, they turned out to be so weak, they broke a little more at every difference of opinion, every instance where we stood up for ourselves, every time people looked at us and didn’t see themselves. Maybe it was some argument, someone else’s stupid meddling, someone’s denial.
Maybe it was all because of lies and fragile egos, people trying to turn one against the other, smear campaigns, and the rush to judgment.
So there was a death that day, but we didn’t lose the person then. We lost this person long ago, and it broke our hearts a thousand times already. Is this someone we really had or truly knew? We lost that chance. We lost to the dysfunction. Not even the obligatory love and commitment could save it.
It got to a point where suiting up and showing up simply hurt too much.
Somewhere along the line, we’ll see some display of genuine family love and laughter, and we want that, all the while wondering why we didn’t get it, and so we grieve that.
Yes, we mourn what we couldn’t have, and death is not only a reminder, it is the finale. We say goodbye with so much weight, with a burden too hard to hold. There are holes that will never be filled, stories that will never be heard, never told, and scars that won’t heal. There is grief in isolation. It’s more than sorrow. It’s devastation.
You miss what you wanted that to be, but you don’t want it back, not any of it.
Quite honestly, it becomes clearer to me every day, how complicated grief is with all of its added dimensions.
People celebrate certain individuals and shun others. Maybe the shunning was because of addiction or disease, or maybe it was the wrong sexual preference. I don’t know.
But one mother and child may have the world to grieve with her, and so she should. In the other case, a parent and child can go through hell with no one comprehending the loss or caring.
Others simply deemed the person mourned unworthy for something beyond his or her control, while others are worthy regardless of their choices, because their choices were ones people could relate to, things people didn’t fear for lack of understanding.
I think about these things… and all of life’s unfairness. Life is not fair, nor will it ever be. Accepting that helps, but doesn’t heal. There are moments we can’t handle anymore, not just then, no, and we shut down. We have to.
And we ask, what’s wrong with me that I feel this way? What’s wrong with me that I see these things others don’t see, that I can’t accept what they accept? What’s wrong with me that I couldn’t fix it, couldn’t explain it, couldn’t stop it, didn’t protest, cried alone? You say, what if they had heard my heart? What if we had resolved all of this?
But they wouldn’t have heard, and it wouldn’t have gotten resolved, and we know it. We have to deal instead with feelings of unworthiness, our inadequacies and our excuses, our humanity, and our pain… so much pain.
The burdens we share should inspire universal love and compassion. It does for me, and yet all I see is ever-increasing hate in the world. Another reason to grieve. It’s no wonder I would rather write and live in my own little world than continually bear witness to the imbalance, the insanity.
Oh, I know grief has its profound beauty. We can experience joy, happiness, sadness, hurt, and none are permanent states. They are moments that come to us, moments to awaken us and to experience with all of our hearts. In that sense, we must embrace every moment. And I do.
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Kyrian Lyndon is the author of Provenance of Bondage, the first book in her Deadly Veils series. She has also published two poetry collections, A Dark Rose Blooms, and Remnants of Severed Chains. Kyrian began writing short stories and fairy tales when she was just eight years old. In her adolescence, she moved on to poetry. At 16, while working as an editor for her high school newspaper, she wrote her first novel, and then completed two more novels at the ages of 19 and 25. Born and raised in Woodside, Queens, New York, Kyrian was the middle of three daughters born to immigrants — her father from Campochiaro, Italy; her mother from Havana, Cuba. She has worked primarily in executive-level administrative positions with major New York publishing companies. She resides on Long Island in New York.
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