It saddens my heart to say I’ve experienced a lot of loss in my life. From when I was 13 to losing my childhood best friend to just this past year, talking to one of my mom’s best friends on her deathbed. To my 22-year-old roommate, who has been in a coma since August with a rare chance of making it out. My grandma, my third parent, a woman who made me who I am, passed away in February. Death has surrounded me.
It’s an undescribable feeling that we all go through somehow, but instead of feeling community, losing somebody feels nothing more than being alone. Every bond we have with each person in our lives is so special to us that the grief and despair we feel after losing them can’t be comparable to anybody else’s. We all have our own mental processes, our own comprehension of what happened, but no matter what you think, it sucks.
You would think that after I’ve witnessed so much loss in my life, I would understand how to grieve at this point. I thought since 13-year-old Emmy already did that, 20-year-old Emmy was gonna be able to get through it just fine or at an easier level. But what I experienced as an early teenager still holds true in my early adulthood; it feels unbearable to live without them. It makes me question the world around me. Why, why do I keep trying? Why do I strive for those societal norms of going to college and working at 9 to 5, having kids, and getting married, and all to just be thrown into the ocean when I’m dead and gone? I would never trade those people for anything, but what am I willing to trade to be without them?
This feeling takes my thoughts to another extreme if that wasn’t evident. I struggle to get out of bed, to get through my day. I sob when songs come on the radio or every holiday that passes. Easter was our first one without my grandma. I felt so empty. Alone. I had my family around me, and we are all experiencing the same loss. But nothing could have compared with her being there with us.
I hate who I become when I become like this. I push away the people I love. But still feel the loneliness burst from inside of me. I feel as if the people I look to never understand, instead, treat me like I am a burden. I have been here before, and each time it still feels like I can’t get out. Now it really feels that way because I can’t get her back. The person who saw the best parts of me is gone, so how can I see the best parts of myself? How can I love myself the way she unconditionally loved me?
I cry every night. I dream of a world where this isn’t my reality, if I am lucky enough to fall asleep. Where one day she and I can play cards and eat tangerines in the backyard again. Where she can tell my clothes are too scandalous and that I don’t need to be wearing that much makeup. To have her wake me up for school and share a bathroom.
It has been 7 years since I lost my best friend to muscular dystrophy. I keep photos of him in my room, always support WWE and the Hulk, and make sure to wear his bracelets whenever I experience something wild. It gets easier with each day, but it doesn’t replace the feeling that I don’t think anybody could know me or understand me the way he did. I know it may sound a little creepy. In the men in my life, I find friends or relationships that remind me of him. Those traits that resemble the sense of warmth I used to have when with him. A sense that he is watching over my life. I talk to him for advice even though he can’t respond. I go get McDonald’s chicken nuggets with sweet-and-sour sauce, and I go put flowers in our lake every birthday and every anniversary of his death. I can never let him go. I never want to let him go.
I love my people down here, but I don’t know how to be Emmy without the ones I’ve lost. Without my Grandma and Grandpa Bailey, my Grandpa Abbott, my Cyndi, my Curtis, my Cami, my three uncles, my pets (Max, Bob, and infamous Bouncey Blue), my Daven, and of course my queen, my gma, my everything.
To my angels, I do everything to honor you. I take you everywhere with me. I know you are my guardian angels. While I yearn to see you again, I will keep living my life to hope you can live through me. Promising to carry your legacy along with me in each breath I take. I love you.