What people don’t tell you about grief

Society makes us believe a bunch of things about grief that can slow down the process of mourning. Here’s what they don’t tell you : 

> The five stages of grief is bullshit 

Because there’s actually 7 stages and they are also bullshit. You go through it but you don’t have to go into denial, or anger, or anything. Some people don’t ever feel anger. Some feel sadness first then the shock then the acceptation, then the denial, etc. Conclusion : it’s bullshit. 

> People will tell you horrible things 

My personnal favorites are “ they are in a better place “ yeah Stephanie but I’d rather have them with me :)) and “ if you sell the house/the car/any other item , I’d like to buy it ! “ do I look like I can deal with this right now ?? 

Sometimes they want to soothe us… And they try hard… But it’s clumsy. “ You already have childrens it’s okay to miscarriage “, “ at least you were expecting them to die “, “ they didn’t suffer “. People will tell you “ they wouldn’t want to see you like this “ and it’s horrible because we are fucking destroyed but we feel guilty about it, because we think our loved one would be disappointed in us. It’s truly painful.

> There’s a physical dimension in grief 

First because when you loose a person, you loose them physically. They do not longer exist as a body on earth, the loss is a true loss of someone. It’s not even the fact that we lost connection with this person, it’s the fact that their body is not there anymore.

Second because we need stuff to mourn. We need objects, clothes, pictures, bed sheets, jewelry, grave. We need to touch and feel on our skin, we sit in closets between clothes, we smell bed sheets, we play with their car keys, we wear their necklace. 

> After a time, people expect you to be okay

And that fucking sucks. They will expect “ I’m okay “ when they ask how we are doing, they will think that you moved on and that your grief is over so they will act like it. Some of them may even blame you for “ still being sad “. In the same vibes, after a time people stop calling and proposing their help because they assume you’re over it.

> It will get harder by the time 

According to psychiatrists, after about 1 year ½ - 2 years, you’ve done a good part of the process and so you can start thinking about the person without waking in yourself any pain, you grew up from the tragedy… But it feels like you’re loosing the person a second time. Psychiatrists say you may feel miserable and like you’ve not grieved - basically returning at the beginning of mourning. Thanksfully after few months feeling this way, you will rise again <3

> You will do weird things

Literally. Because loosing a person is a tsunami, you may find yourself searching for explanations about embalming bodies, crying because you didn’t park right, eating one single food every damn meal for weeks, watching cartoons with your kids/your siblings/or even alone. Everybody copes their own way, let yourself rest on the flow. 

> You will never be on the same page as people

If both partners loose a child, they will never be on the same page ; for one of them today is a okay-day, for the other today is a I-can’t-get up-beacause-of-pain-day. Same for siblings that loose a parent, etc. And that is why grief is the loneliest psychological process that exist. You will feel very, very, very alone and everyone else around you also feel that way.

> It’s GODDAMN tiring

Grief is exhausting. 

On a physical level. 

You body will hurt just as much as your soul, you will probably get sick after few weeks, I personally could not walk the day after the funeral because of how tensed I was during the ceremony. You may even sleep 11 hours and still feel exhausted ; as I said, there’s a physical dimension in grief and it makes us very tired. 

Life will never be the same, but if you needed a sign, it’s your sign : you got this. 

I feel unlovable and it breaks my heart daily 

No offense but I’m really uncomfortable in my body and I want to rip my skin off

Creator unknown, happy to credit if anyone knows

sorry, i can’t, i’m busy watching everything get worse

me: [softly] for fuck’s sake

all music should be as intense as possible and then we should all die

sometimes it just hurts and there is nothing you can do about it