Trigger Warning: This article discusses grief, grieving for someone, sadness/depression, and associated emotions and experiences around grieving
“Good grief” is a phrase we often use to express exasperation at a person or situation, but, in a weird turn of events in my life, grief has forced me to evaluate my life and work on myself.
One of the things people say in regards to college is that it’s going to be the best four years of your life; you’ll make new friends. have wonderful new experiences and all these other amazing stuff. No one ever talks about what to do when you suffer tragedy in college because it’s not supposed to happen. But, for many of us, we are struggling with the loss of a loved one.
Over a year ago, I lost someone incredibly dear to me who was one of my main supporters throughout all facets of my life. During the semester where Hurricane Florence hit UNCW, I was also grieving intensely for this person. There were days I would walk to class feeling completely numb and had no emotion or feelings regarding anything that was happening. I would sit in lectures half-listening to professors and wanted to start bawling for no reason. The sadness had just overwhelmed me, but I had to choke back tears because I didn’t want to be the person causing a scene in the middle of class. Grieving has been the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, and I didn’t do it once, but twice, within the span of several months, losing two people who meant the world to me.
The worst part about grieving in college is that it’s done so quietly, you will never know if someone is grieving unless they say something. No one, peers or adults, expects a college student to know the pain of loss at this age.
One thing I’ve dealt with a lot with while grieving was older people constantly looking at me with pity, and it would make me so incredibly angry. A lot of these people don’t know me, and they’re placing their opinions and expectations upon me at a very vulnerable point in my life. Another is that other people have placed importance on things that have never meant anything while the person I’m grieving was alive. which can be really frustrating. I’ve had to tell people that the way they’re acting around me or the things they say are hurting more than helping, which is awkward and hard to do, but it’s necessary to maintain my relationship with them.
I have gone through a whirlwind of emotions, not quite subscribing to the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. I mainly linger around frustration, sadness, and acceptance. It can be really hard to go from accepting the loss of someone to going back to being sad about it while juggling a full class load, familial obligations, friend events, and searching for a job. There were a couple of points in which I wanted to drop out of college, but I never fully gave it thought; once I thought about it, I knew the person I was grieving would be incredibly saddened by my decision to quit when I had worked so hard to be where I am. Having that thought in the back of my head helped me soldier on.
I’ve been grieving for about a year and a half now, and, while it’s too early for me to say that it gets better with time, there have been a few things that have helped me get through it. One of those is the support network that I’ve built. It’s not really very large, just a couple of people who know my situation and who I trust to be able to talk to when the grieving gets really real. I can tell them “I miss this person and here are the thoughts that have been spinning around in my head,” and, for me, that’s been good. These are also people who I trust to tell me when I’m overthinking a situation, as I’m prone to do, and give me a perspective that’s not in my head to tell me what I’m feeling is valid.
I cannot stress enough that the pain you are going through is very real and so valid. The anger or frustration you feel about what’s happening is okay to feel. What’s not okay is to linger for long periods of time (weeks or months) in that anger or sadness and not actively work on why you feel that way. I will say that I’ve had days where I’m just sad and there’s not really much that can be done other than to embrace it like I would a small child and let it be valid, but I can’t let it take over my life. It’s so important to let yourself feel your emotions. When I realized that there would just be days where I’m sad and embraced that and accepted that, the sadness stopped being so intense. Sadness isn’t a bad emotion; it shows just how much this person meant to you, and it’s okay to let it happen.
Grief is painful. I would equate it to walking around with an open wound on your heart. Sometimes it scabs over, and it’s okay for a while; other times it’s fresh and bleeding. There’s not always a rhyme or rhythm to it, and sometimes there is. There is no right or wrong way to grieve. One of my favorite quotes that has sort of become a mantra for me during this time is that “Healing is not linear.” Healing is your path to take, but you’re not walking it alone.
[Image courtesy of Priscilla Du Preez of unsplash.]