Good Grief

By Gillian

I was never a great swimmer. My body would tire and my muscles would ache. I’d thrash and squirm and gulp saltiness. I’ll never forget the feeling of inhaling water, the burning that sweeps through the lungs and the stinging during the slow recovery.

It was like that. The After. An inescapable breathlessness. A heaving and gasping and gulping, grasping for anything to hold onto. The in and out that skip and hasten. The airways close and the throat is no longer a tunnel but a labyrinth, constricting tighter and tighter. There’s choking for air, but the ocean is inside of you, swarming, swaying, swelling, spilling over the top.

 And the cannon fire to underscore it all. A stampede of thuds clamoring in the chest, a great crescendo echoing up to the ears, drumming to a spiraling tempo… thud, thud, thud-thud, thudthudthudthud. Like a fist pounding on a door, banging, clanging, threatening to rip it open. A ringing thunder to drown it all out…

I try not to think too much about The Before. The mythical time when you’re blissfully unaware of the ticking time bomb waiting to explode, waiting to punch the irreparable hole in your chest. The time when you took everything for granted, overlooked the one person who’d love you unconditionally. Before you’d ever known true loss, before every single ounce of pain paled in comparison to the insurmountable agony you’d feel. The time before the world shut down and you found yourself standing in a hospital room wrapped in layers of plastic, reaching out to a pale arm that was far too cold and unrecognizable… 

I’m lost in The After.

There’s disbelief. Denial, backtracking, shock. Each new question is an unsolvable riddle. How? How could this happen? It wasn’t supposed to be like this. We had plans. We had tickets to that show. She was supposed to come visit me that semester. We were going to do so much when this was all over. We were supposed to be together forever. I meant to say something before… Did I get to it? Everything was fine a week ago. And we were just talking about—what’s going to happen from now on? I didn’t get any sleep last night because of my darkly wandering mind, so maybe I willed it into existence. Did she know how late I stayed up, or could she hear the TV from the living room I kept on all night?

There’s remembering. Some things are crystal clear, like steppingstones through time, while others are fogged over, like warm breath clouding a looking glass. Those flashes of memory that come with or without invitation, possessing the mind to another time, another place, another reality. Sometimes you remember things like they were yesterday, that dumb joke that made you belly laugh, those long drives down backroads just to get out of the house, the warmth that filled the apartment when the oven was on. And other times, you don’t know if you just imagined them. You’re stuck in this purgatory of re-memory.

There’s reminding. Those cruel tricks of the mind. Like phantom pain in lost limbs every time you try to walk on one foot. Like tracing the hole of a missing tooth with your tongue and being surprised each time. The constant forgetting and reminding and shock cycles in an endless loop. Reminding yourself what was lost. Turning your head to speak to a ghost. Fighting the urge to think of their name, tell them your daily grievances like you’d always do. Reliving the gut-wrenching bombshell every single time until you don’t really remember what’s missing, just the colossal, gaping hole left behind.

There’s regretting. The “what ifs” and “should haves” bounce around your mind until they pound like angry fists against your skull. It comes back in little spurts and pours down in shameful raindrops that soak your brain. Your worst moments play back in a beautifully miserable compilation, and you’re struck withs the excruciating fact that you knew better but didn’t do anything.

There’s fuming. You curse the world and everyone in it. Toss around blame like it’s a kickball on a playground. Ride the spinning carnival wheel of anger and guilt and shame. Screw those who have what I don’t and all the people it should’ve been. Screw this stupid country and all the people whose fault this is. I hate everyone and everything and all the things I used to love—I hate them, or they’re gone, too.

There’s reeling. There is no Before. There’s just this. Only trudging through murky waters and the fogginess of those nighttime hallucinations that seem all too real. Every now and then there’s a rumbling in the stomach, but it numbs if you wait long enough. I imagined my body to be a cavernous gorge, the wind rumbling through the rocky cliffs, clashing into grumbling rocks with heated breaths. I wondered if I’d sink down into the bed, if the blankets would consume me, smother the wind within me, bury me under if I waited long enough.

There’s lying. And hiding. You lie to yourself and everyone you know. Lie to strangers on the Internet that it’ll get better. Paint those pretty smiles on plastic cheeks and get good marks because that’s all they really care about. Go through the motions, you’ve done this before. Make a good show, you’ve always loved theatrics. Tell them a lovely little story and brush it all off. Oh, what a great actress you are!

There’s un-remembering. Memory is the curse of the living. You shut out everything that happened and everything that’s happening. Shut out who you were and who you are. Blank out all the faces that haunt your memories and drown out all the voices you once knew until they’re just background noise. Let yourself sink into that dark void because it’s more bearable than anything that came before.

There’s failing. I sit in her seat but I can’t fill her shoes, every step I take, I’m bound to lose. I can’t help these people with the heavy eyes who just want something to do. All their kindness towards me is because of her. I was never the socialite, I’m horrible company, too. I can’t light up a room, that was always her. So don’t dare ask me to make that dish for Thanksgiving because I don’t know the recipe, she’s the one who always made it and I’m not her replacement.

 There’s forgetting. The ironic panic that fills your chest as you forage through your mind for lost treasures. Where did that pink cat knickknack that sat on the television mantle come from? It was from a vacation she went on, but was it Puerto Rico or Mexico? And what was in that stroganoff recipe, I know it had cream of mushroom soup, but did she include broth? She never measured anything, and I never wrote it down, and I tried to make it but it just wasn’t the same. And did we ever watch that movie together, what did she think? What did she say? What was the name of that friend she mentioned? There’s no one to ask…

There’s seeing. That newfound vision you can’t shake. Grief is like a pair of glasses you can’t take off; you see the world differently, even though nothing’s changed. The earth turns and seasons change but you’re stuck seeing everything for all its ugliness. Seeing all the ghosts that lurk in the darkness. And the newfound blindness that accompanies it. That darkness that invades your mind when you think of the fabled future. I used to have that picture—the one people have when they close their eyes and cast themselves into a far-off land and see themselves older, hopeful, wiser. When they imagine what’s to come and pour their hearts into making that beautiful dream a reality. I don’t have that anymore. I’m losing grip on it. I can’t see myself. Or her. It’s all gone.

There’s accepting. The surrender as you swallow this new reality. It’ll always be like this. I’ll always be like this. There’s no going back and no Before. Just this. I’m not the same person I used to be. I don’t really remember them anymore. They’re a stranger. A distant memory, like an illusory figure in a far-off dreamland. I’m resolved to this. To pain. To emptiness. To numbness. To nothingness. To moving on. To forgetting and starting over. I’m tethered to the sickly motion of time as it hurls me forward, stumbling into some great unknown. I don’t want the same things I used to. My dreams are smaller now and I think I can be okay with that. I have to be.

Sometime in the inescapable Now. There’s realizing. Those sorrowful faces you can’t help because you don’t even know where to start. But it’s okay because they look at you with that same sadness. Those voices that tell their stories and make you brave enough to tell yours. Those eyes that look at you not with pity, but with understanding. That recognition of mirrored loss and struggle and grief. And maybe you’re not the only one with newfound vision. There are those people that hear you and see you and sometimes that’s enough.

Gillian is currently pursuing a B.A. in Communications with a minor in English at Northeastern University. She enjoys creative writing and hopes to work in the television industry after college.

Read more from our Writing to Heal: College Student Stories series.