I never learned to grieve.
I lived for decades, opened up my heart to countless people and places and things, lost a lot of them—but I never grieved their loss. I was never able to; I never learned how. I felt sad in the moment, and that was that. The rest, I pushed away. I had to, in order to survive. But, like all defense mechanisms born from trauma, that only gets you so far.
It all adds up.
When the pandemic started, I coincidentally began trauma therapy. I'm still at it, over four years later, because that kind of thing takes time. I've grown a lot as a person since then, and I can tell that I've made a lot of progress in a lot of very important places. But just as someone sitting on a rain-soaked curb watching heavy machinery tear their house down to its foundations because what started as moldy wallpaper turned out to be a cascade of issues running deeper than anyone had ever imagined, I am constantly faced with the realization that there's more. There's always more. It feels unending. But I know that if I keep at it, one day, all this exhausting hard work will end.
And then I'll be able to start rebuilding. The part after an ending, that I never got to see.
But the grieving, even once I start feeling it, even once I start understanding it—as I have been recently, having finally gotten around to that part of my therapeutic journey—the grieving will never end. If I've learned anything it's that it comes and goes, becomes more and less powerful over time, but it never truly ends. Maybe that's why I've been so afraid of starting to feel it this whole time.
It's funny, isn't it? By living my entire life in fear of endings, I've kept ignoring the one thing that never does.
But now I'm feeling it, at long last. And it hurts; it really hurts. But at least there's some relief in it, some release, as the weight of innumerable unfelt losses is being lifted from my shoulders, bit by bit. I'm going to miss a lot of people and places and things, but I won't miss the crushing feeling of all their unprocessed grief.
But I'll miss this place. I'm going to miss it so much.
I miss it already—which is strange, right? It's still here. It's going to be here for a while longer after it goes read-only in a couple days, even if instead of a place, it'll have become a thing. But it'll still be here for weeks, if not months. And then it'll be somewhere different, for a longer while. But not forever. I've stopped believing anything can last that long. Not that it matters all that much; like I said, I'm already missing it.
Maybe it's part of having to avoid grief to survive all this time. In never embracing ends, I've never been able to reach the beginnings that lie on the other side.
I always end up missing something before it's gone.
I live in fear of losing something, to the point where I can never enjoy having it.
I become so afraid of never getting something I want, that I can't even look forward to it.
That's what happened with GRS. I was so preoccupied that I'd do or say the wrong thing and domino-effect my way into having my surgery date moved back or worse, canceled, that I just kept my cards close to my chest until the moment I woke up afterwards, when it was absolutely impossible for it not to happen, because it already had.
That's what happened with my wedding. Same fears, same worries, that somehow by boasting about it or showing how genuinely excited I was for it, I would attract the universe's attention and the ceremony would get canceled, just to teach me a lesson. My wife and I got to have our wedding, but I never got to look forward to it. I never got to share the excitement of such an important event before it had happened.
I hope that's what waits for me on the other side of grief. I hope that by understanding those feelings of loss, by finally processing them, perhaps I can enjoy the moments that come before—perhaps I can look forward to whatever new beginnings will come after.
Until then, I'll grieve. I'll miss.
I'll miss this place, this ephemeral online space where I could be myself more than anywhere else. Where I could share parts of me without treating them like products on a marketplace, or contestants in a game show.
I'll miss the possibilities that this place offered. I'll miss the things I started but will never get to finish here. I'll miss the posts that never even made it to drafts. I'll miss the traditions I barely got to start, the events and jams I just started to join, the communities I was starting to see blossom. I'll miss the in-jokes, the expressions, the shared language.
I think that's what I'll miss the most. That's part of grieving too, isn't it? When I lost people, I also lost the language we'd cultivated together, the shorthand we'd built. I lost the use of so much social muscle memory that would never again find purchase, so many calls that would never again get a response. I had to learn to live without them. I never did, of course; I just pushed all those feelings down and left them for later.
Well, it's later.
It's like planting a tree. The best time to start processing all this trauma was 20 years ago; the second best time is now.
Same goes for enjoying what I have while I have it. Same goes for learning to look forward to new beginnings, built on much stronger foundations thanks to all that work.
Thanks for reading. And above all else, thanks for being here. You helped make this place into what it was, and what it is... and what it will be, for at least another day or so. Not a very long amount of time, but an amount nonetheless. Plenty enough to write some more. Plenty enough to read, and share, and like, and love.
Let's make the most of it. I'll certainly try. <3
