My dad died and what must happen now? am I supposed to know how to exist in a world without him? am I supposed to know how to feel ? am I supposed to remember how to put one foot in front of the other? because I don’t. I don’t know how to do any of these things, its been 5 months and my body physically will not let me grieve, its like my body is in fight or flight mode and it is fighting every emotional reaction and its running away from the reality and therefore not processing and I am on auto pilot doing what I do best, making lists and crossing shit off them, I am in some warped play and I am giving the performance of my life, I hear people ask my mother “how are the children?” I hear her standard reply “ we are stronger every day, much better than we were in November” but are we?….. honestly I am not.
I remarked to my godmother that I feel anxious sitting on top of all this grief , anxiously waiting for it to explode, I know the day is coming where this bubble I have created for myself will burst and then I know all hell will break loose because this grief will consume me, I know this is going to happen, all the signs point to that but I have no idea when it will happen , how it will happen and what will trigger it, at this point you are saying to yourself “ goddamit Tarryn, get yourself to a therapist for godssake” and you would probably be right, I don’t know why I’m not spending every afternoon on someone’s couch , maybe in my mind doing that means accepting that this is real, that he is not coming home… I don’t know, I don’t have answers.
Grief is a maze and I am lost , wandering around in circles, there are no clues, there is no timeline, there is no guide and I think whats worst is literally no one on planet earth can offer advice because we all grieve differently, my sister and I both lost our father but her journey and mine could not be more different.
I think being the eldest child is partly to blame-listen being the eldest in general is a traumatic mind fuck but thats an essay for another day- anyway I think being the eldest and being someone who relies on logic and not emotion to survive the day is partly to blame for how I am grieving, I am subconsciously stepping into the “head of the family” role my father filled, taking on the responsibility of making sure my mother and siblings and grandmother and cousins are all okay, using all the will power in me to not fall apart in public because I dont want to burden people with my grief when they have their own …This behavior/reaction makes sense to me and is very indicative of who I am as a person-how I annoy myself by being this way-.
The most irritating of all is that the one person who would help me navigate this new terrain is Dad…
Tarryn this is beautiful. You are holding so much, but you are also aware of that. The writing will sustain you in the next layer. You say you can't put one foot in front of the other, but you did. This essay is a big step. Take another and another. I am here for it :)