i have been doing a whole lot of nothing lately to make sure not one (1) single solitary emotional thought pops into my head. scrolling through instagram, swiping through tinder, sifting through emails. anything to occupy my jumpy little brain cells that are scared to death that i’m going to put down a screen and have to feel something.
most of the feelings i’m avoiding have to do with this tuesday. it’s the first anniversary of my ex’s death, and it’s rosh hashanah, the jewish new year. i keep trying to predict how that day is going to feel; in fact, i feel a lot of pressure (purely from myself) to get that day Right somehow, like there’s some ideal way i should honor him or reflect on the past year.
about a week and a half ago was his yahrzeit, the anniversary of his death according to the jewish calendar. he wasn’t jewish, but i am, and lighting a traditional yahrzeit candle in his memory felt right to me. lighting the candle didn’t hit me too hard, which surprised me. i thought i was going to feel a new wave of pain, but instead i felt a new distance from him, both in time and connection. and i didn’t feel guilty or sad about that distance for a change.
if i’ve learned anything from the past year, it’s that grief comes however and whenever it wants to. you can’t schedule it. it’s possible that tuesday will naturally be a Grief Lite™ day, where i miss him and think about him but don’t feel that deep dark despair. it’s also possible that i won’t be able to stop sobbing. who tf knows. i feel like i’m bracing myself for the latter, which will maybe make me feel disappointed and/or guilty if it turns out to be the former? ugh. someone remind Tuesday Me that there is no right way to do this.
then in addition to the unpredictable levels of griefy-ness, there’s the whole marking-the-passage-of-time thing.
get ready for some gnarly automatic thoughts: have i done enough in the past year? have i grown from my loss? have i turned my anguish into fuel for making huge, positive change in my community? why not?? did i just spend the last year crying over an ex-boyfriend who probably never actually loved me? wait has it been three years?? what am i doing, who am i, and will this ever end
oh boy check the time bc i think it is yikes o’clock over here! maybe i’ll start the reflecting now so it’s not so overwhelming on tuesday:
a year ago, i was feeling something brand new. i still haven’t really found the words to describe it. yes, it was pain, emptiness, and despair. but that doesn’t really convey the physicality of it. the recurrent realization that he was permanently gone made me feel so powerless that it felt like i couldn’t possibly exist. and if i didn’t exist then i didn’t need to move or eat or breathe. i would lie in my bed, just an idea of a human, unable to understand how my nightmares came true and that i could not wake up.
and now i’m sitting on my couch, eating apple cake, and writing a blog post! that’s progress for ya baybeeeeee
but actually, it took me a while to accept that i was allowed to start feeling ok again, that it is normal and healthy for those intense feelings to come in smaller and smaller doses. so honestly if that’s all i did this year, i think that’s eNoUgH.
phew, ok team. i think we did some really great work here today. i’m feeling a lot less scared of tuesday & i hope you are, too. now let’s get back to some mindless doomscrolling!! <3