Anger, sadness, frustration, all these are words that can best describe the feelings of grief. Grief is a heavy, suffocating feeling that can weaken even the strongest people. Sometimes when things happen, they cause you to look at life differently and make you question things you've always known.
Growing up, one could say I was a kind of difficult child, I received all the beatings, scolding and punishment amongst all of my siblings. At a point you get used to these things, that they don't faze you anymore. I began to pride myself with that, not feeling pain, but it became worse, I really couldn't feel sadness properly, even if I wanted to. After about an hour, I'm cracking jokes or watching the next funny thing on my phone. I hated myself for it.
In primary school, I was taught that death happens either when someone gets old, is killed or has a prolonged sickness they can no longer handle. If i'm being honest, before the last one year, i've never had to deal with death so close to me. I lost my grandfather when I was about 14 or 15, but I didn't feel it. I wasn't really close to my grandfather, so I understood, but I tried to be there for my dad, but I don't think I did a good job. Last year, I lost one of my uncles who I was quite close to. I knew him well enough to join others in wailing and lamenting, but I couldn't.
When my mum told me around 6am in the morning, my heart sank, like it was in my stomach, like I would throw up and I'll see my heart. I hated the feeling, it was so unfamiliar, It made me scared and confused. "I don't get it? why? How?", these questions ran through my mind and the only one I got answered was how. I didn't cry, that day at like 2pm i was eating and gisting with the help like normal, the feeling was still inside me, but I acted like it wasn't there. I didn't cry, at all, from the day I heard of his death to the day of his burial, not a tear. But in the middle of the burial, i saw my aunty cry and unknowingly i started shedding tears, I didn't notice until my mum pointed it out. I touched my face, felt dizzy, looked at a mirror, saw my eyes were red and laughed at the fact that I was crying.
In August I had to deal with the painful loss of a close friend whose life was cut short. When the news broke, I had that feeling again in my chest, I wanted to throw up. I just cried instead. I don't know if I cried because I wanted to cry or because I knew I should. Either way I cried throughout the day, both knowingly and unknowingly.
As I woke up on October 1st to playboi carti's new month song, another person was taken from me. As I began to feel all those recently familiar feelings again, I just stopped and wondered, what exactly is the point to life?
In recent times everyone has begun to engage in hustle culture, sometimes in the process of working hard they don't exactly enjoy what they work for. Imagine making all the millions attainable, only to be taken from the earth and leave all your hard work to be enjoyed by someone else. So like I said, what's the point?
Gone too soon is a sentence you see when people die before their time, but I've never been able to understand it, until recently. Then again, there are wicked people who roam the earth and live to old age, while sometimes in lavishness and comfort.
Recent experiences made me realise that this mental distance I have is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it keeps me safe from the steady stream of sad news the world tends to bring. On the other hand, I wasn't ready for how intense my own sadness would be when it finally hit close to home.
When I receive news of my loved ones passing on, it's shocking at first. It feels like the emotional wall I built over the years is now collapsing, letting the raw, unfiltered pain I had been able to hide for so long out into the open.
When a person has become numb to pain, dealing with grief becomes challenging, as a flood of emotions can suddenly overwhelm, like a tsunami breaking through a weak dam. I wasn't ready for how hard the sadness, anger, guilt, and confusion hit me. It is too much for me to handle, and I sometimes wonder if I had the right to be so sad when I had been so numb and sometimes judgemental to other people's pain in the past.
Grieving is turning out to be a strange trip. I want to feel all of my feelings, but I am afraid of how bad the pain would be. I felt like I had forgotten how to grieve and let myself be weak and sad. I have to learn to talk about sadness all over again, and it's hard.
As a person who has become numb to pain, feeling alone is one of the most complex parts of grief. My family members are grieving as well, we're all very fragile and we are looking out for each other. I'm also blessed with friends who are there for me and ready to help, but it is so hard for me to explain how bad my pain is. It felt like my feelings were behind a glass wall, where I could see them but not reach them.
As time passed, I realised that everyone has to go through loss, no matter how hardened I had become to it. It reminded me that I wasn't invincible and could still feel deeply, even though the world often seemed cold and uncaring.
Ultimately, it is a complex and deeply personal fight to deal with grief as a person who has lost the ability to feel. It means facing the emotional walls we've built, relearning the language of sorrow, and finding a way to connect with others in our sadness. Even though it may be challenging, it gives me a chance to grow, learn understanding, and see the fragile beauty of life in a new way. Even though it hurts, the recent deaths surrounding me is a potent reminder that even numb hearts can still feel the depths of grief and find the strength to heal.
Sadly, to my dismay, I now live in fear, fear of what might happen, fear of who is next and what scares me more is that I might be next because from what I've seen, death is no respecter of persons.