Losing people

I’m only 21 years old, but I’ve experienced all sorts of loss in all sorts of ways. Loss is something that ties humans together because we all experience it. It’s never easy.

I haven’t experienced the death of a loved one yet, so this blog post refers to losing contact with people (who are still alive) which is still a type of grief in itself.

Considering it's an inevitability, what can we learn from losing people? I’m not sure I know the full answer to this, but let me explore some things on my mind about losing people.

Losing contact with a friend is a special kind of heartbreak, and sometimes it really stays with you. I’ve lost friends that I considered my life partners, friends that I had been close to for 8+ years. I’ve had friendships that only lasted for a few months that had probably impacted me more than the ones I had known for years. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt, it is that love has no time constraint. There are people I had known for such a short period of time who I still think about everyday. People I would give my left arm for. People I care for more than the ones I’ve known my whole life.

Growing up, I lost many friends. The situations always vary, either we fell out over something, or nothing happened and we just grew apart. I usually find that falling out with a friend hurts so much more. I’m a really anxious person and I have a tendency to over-analyse situations, so I find myself going over what happened, making excuses or finding solutions. I ask myself: Could I have done anything differently? Do they still think about me? If I messaged them right now, would they respond?

The worst thing is, if we’ve stopped speaking because of something they did to me, I tend to brush over what they did, focus on the good memories, and smile about them. I find it incredibly difficult to dislike someone I loved. My brain somehow filters that person into someone good - a person completely incapable of bad. I can’t focus on the bad things they did to me, because suddenly I’m looking through old pictures on my phone and find one of me and them smiling and laughing together, and it’s all okay. Nostalgia is a liar.

The loss of a romantic partner is probably the worst thing I’ve ever felt. It’s a completely inexplicable feeling - I can only liken it to having your body cut in half. Half of you is gone, and you just have to accept that. I do the same thing with an ex partner, too. I find it impossible to see their bad qualities, even if it slaps me in the face. I don’t know why this is the case for me, it seems uncontrollable.

What does make it feel slightly better though, is knowing that losing people is part of growing up. It’s part of life. It would be really unrealistic and probably impossible if you kept all the people you loved in your life. Shit happens. People move away, people change. People die, too. As I said, I’ve been lucky enough to not experience the death of someone I love yet. It’s inevitable, but I’m sure it’s a similar feeling to losing people who are alive.

Grief has been on my mind a lot lately, probably because I’m grieving a few bonds right now. It has made me think about life a considerable amount. A lot of the time, people I have lost show up in my dreams. It’s such a bittersweet feeling - meeting that person again and talking to them, then waking up and realising it wasn’t real. I had a dream recently that I met up with someone who I cut ties with not too long ago. It felt incredibly real, until I woke up and was in shock at how our brains can fool us in such a way. It must be because our brains are craving that feeling of love again, so they recreate it in our dreams for comfort. It’s crazy how the mind works. It makes you think: if we’re so easily fooled that something which isn’t reality, is reality at the time, then how real is reality actually?

I don’t think the grief of losing someone ever goes away. I mean, it depends on who it is and the situation, of course. I look back to when I was a teen and I had stopped speaking to someone really special to me - I thought at the time that I would never get over it. But nowadays, that person barely crosses my mind. It definitely does depend. I find myself thinking about someone I’ve lost at random times, usually just before I go to sleep, or when I’m doing a simple activity during the day like cooking. I would often come across something that reminds me of them, an old song perhaps, or a TV show we used to watch together. My mind races through old memories like a flip book. It’s always the good memories too, never the bad.

I’ve noticed that grief comes in waves, over a long period of time. Some days, they’re on my mind a lot, other days, not so much. Some days I feel completely over it, then I end up crying into my pillow the same night, almost beating myself up for not being over it the way I thought I was.

There is such a pressure to get over things. What if we don’t have to get over things? Losing someone can be a type of trauma, and trauma has lasting wounds.

I read this piece on grief that I’d like to share:

"As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks."

I’m trying to look at it in a positive light. The fact that I feel so hurt from thinking about people that aren’t in my life anymore must mean something. It means I loved some people really deeply - surely, that is a good thing?

Love is so paradoxical. It’s something that you can only really feel the full effects of if reciprocated. Frank Ocean’s song Bad Religion really explains this feeling well.

The way I’m trying to cope with grief is keeping in mind that everyone I meet is temporary in one way or another. It might seem like quite a dark thought, but it is true. I try to keep in mind that I should feel grateful for them in that moment, because one day they won’t be there. I should have fun with them in the time that we have together. It’s the most bittersweet feeling.

I try to look back, now, on people who aren’t in my life anymore, as a time well spent. Yes, we’re no longer in each other’s lives, but the time that we were together was purely wonderful. I mentioned this in my previous post about heartbreak: sometimes people are just moments in life, and that’s okay. Our lives are books, and some people enter one chapter and leave in that same chapter. Does anyone really stay for the whole book?

I wrote in my previous post that grief is just love with nowhere to go. I only feel hurt because I still love these people, and they’re not there to feel it. A big part of me wishes I could just phone them up and tell them that, but I think they know that. They know I still love them. The only difference is that I just love them from a distance now.

Only recently, I'm seeing losing people in a good light. I like to imagine my relation with someone as a trip: we met, we had fun, and then we said goodbye. Even if we didn't literally say goodbye to each other, I like to imagine that the last time we saw each other, we hugged and said bye. This way, it feels complete, and I can genuinely smile about it. In a way, I think you're somewhat lucky if you've lost people you really loved because it means you then get to carry a piece of them with you wherever you go, and as you grow older, you'll have several scars made from love.

This wasn’t really a blog post for advice, it was more just me venting, lol. But if there’s one thing for you to take away, it’s that you should appreciate the people around you today, and remind them that you love them often. They’re not going to be with you forever, and right now you’re living in a memory that you’re going to look back on. It sounds really cheesy, but it’s true. Tell the people you love that you love them, and be ready to accept the mortality of relationships. Nothing ever lasts, really.

The pain might not go away completely, but it definitely does get tolerable, and you’ll find yourself filling the spaces in your life with other things that are important to you. A new loss will always mean a new gain, whether it be a person or a hobby. Think of life like a jar - grief takes up a large space in the jar at the start, but as time progresses, the size of the grief shrinks as you fill the jar with other things and you heal. The grief is still there in the jar because it is something that stays, but as you find an identity for yourself and time passes, it doesn’t feel as prominent anymore.

❤️

Lots of love,

Aurora