Life

Apology to my friends

- Grace

This has been in my drafts for 6 years now but it could have been written today because everything in it still resonates. I’m posting it now so it’s easier to find when I no doubt will feel similar again in the future.

“This is my apology to friends who have sent me messages recently that I either haven’t replied to yet or that took me a very long time to reply to… I’ve been in hiding mode.

For the long apology read on. For the short apology: I’m so sorry, I’m trying to pull myself out of hiding and catch up with you all.

My closest friends will probably recognise that I do this every now and again. I’ll suddenly be even more crap at replying to messages than normal – sometimes it’s weeks or months before I respond. Or I’ll not make plans with you, or make it out the house to meet up if we do. And I want to say I’m truly sorry for when I do that; I genuinely love and appreciate your friendship but I’ve gone into hibernate mode and hidden myself away.

  • Sometimes I hide away because I’m mentally and physically exhausted and just getting up and surviving the day is all I can achieve.
  • Sometimes I hide because I don’t know how to answer the inevitable question of ‘what have you been up to?’
  • Sometimes I hide because I’m overwhelmed with things to do yet I can’t seem to work out where to start.
  • Sometimes I hide because being in the real world surrounded by people reminds me that in my world I feel alone.
  • Sometimes I hide because I’ve just lost interest in everything for no reason and I don’t want to bring anyone else down.
  • And sometimes I haven’t worked out the reason why, it just happens.”

What I want you to know:

If I’m rubbish at replying to your message, or I haven’t seen you in ages, please know that I do love you and I’m grateful for your friendship but I’m probably in hiding for one or more of the reasons above until I sort my own head out and I hope you understand.

Things I think I think about grief and loss

- Grace

I’ve been thinking a lot about grief and loss recently. I’ve worked through my thoughts and feelings on my experience of grief and loss in my own head and through counselling, but I’ve never written any of it down.

So here it goes…

  1. I grieve every day. Not always for the same things, but always for something. The grief that never leaves me is for the people I’ve lost in my life; my dad, other family members and people I knew but wasn’t particularly close with, yet whom still impacted my life and changed me and my thinking in one way or another.
  2. I grieve for the relationships and friendships that have changed no matter how hard I try to not let them. I’m grateful to still have these people in my life in any capacity, but I’m sad for the ways things are different as we grow older. I know life moves on and we all grow at different paces but there are milestones friends are now experiencing that I can’t relate to and that changes our relationship even if we don’t want it to.
  3. I grieve for previous versions of myself which are long gone; for the life that could have been, and that I always thought I would have, if certain things hadn’t happened or if I’d made different decisions.
  4. I grieve for the years I lost and the time I can’t get back when I was in a depressive fog; existing but not really living.
  5. I grieve for the confidence and optimism I lost at 22 that if I’m honest I’ve never really regained. For the younger version of me that expected to exist in a world where walking at lunch in the city I grew up in wouldn’t lead to something traumatic.
  6. I grieve for happy moments once they’re over; even though I know I’m truly experiencing happiness in that moment, I’m sad knowing it won’t last.

Despite all this, I know that I’ve learned from these feelings and emotions and I know it’s shaped me into the person I am today.

  1. I know it’s made me gain perspective and maturity I would probably never have had so early in life if I hadn’t gone through these experiences.
  2. I know how important it is to feel all my feelings and to think all my thoughts because that’s part of the process.
  3. I know it’s important to accept situations for what they are and to keep moving, or I’ll end up stuck – back to existing and not really living.
  4. I know it’s important to talk about grief and loss and death, because it’s all too often hushed and seen as too morbid but talking about it openly isn’t shameful.
  5. I know that even though people and experiences might be lost, I still have memories that I can relive over and over again. I take a lot of photos in my life and this is part of why; it helps me relive happy moments and it’s a coping mechanism for the sadness I know I’ll feel when that moment is over.

Things I want to remember:

Grief is inevitable – it’s a part of life. Everyone will experience it in some capacity and at some point, so we need to talk about it. It’s not a shameful secret.

It’s never ending. You might get better at managing your response to it and at handling your feelings but it’ll never go away.

Feeling the losses in your life is not mutually exclusive with experiencing happy times; they can, and do, coexist.