Unrequited Grief

Here we are again – complex, deep, and nearly unexplainable emotions. This time, we will be working with grief. Specifically, grief of the unrequited kind. I was recently exposed to the idea of unprocessed grief, and how we can sometimes use that grief as a justification for not staying in the moment, but more on this later. This was an incredibly insightful take on how we process grief as individuals. Thus, my curiosity and obsession with figuring out how grief works in my life was born. May you enjoy my process, and may it also encourage and help you process grief of your own.

Grief is an assassin.

Assassins lurk below the surface. They work in the dark and sometimes even work in the realm of espionage by disguising themselves to hit their mark. In the same way, grief works to undermine our progress. Let’s tackle each of the ideas one at a time.

 Below the surface

Maybe this is due to societal pressures, or our hopes that hiding grief will make it disappear, but grief is an ever-lurking presence that influences our every move. Think back to a painful moment in your life, and how has it impacted your life. If it hasn’t, well, let me show you how it has by sharing a simple yet pointed example from my life.

At a young age, I longed to be a successful musician. Though I did not pursue this passion until I was in high school, it remained a deep-seated passion. When I got my first guitar at the age of 13, I became obsessed. I spent hours each day learning chords, bar chords, and scales and learned how to read tabs. I spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours mastering that instrument. I would argue that I even became quite the songwriter due to the time spent learning guitar. For me, this was it. This was the career I was going to make a name for myself. I was even able to tour parts of the United States in a band. But life got complicated. There were bills I needed to pay, and relationships I needed to foster, and none of that allowed me to pursue that dream to the fullest.

I felt like I lost a part of who I was, and to this day I hardly play guitar anymore. There is more to that story, but maybe another time. With that in mind, every day of my life I ask myself “What if?” What if I were smarter in pursuing that dream? What if I didn’t give up? What if that was my calling in life? And these questions taint every creative endeavor I pursue. For a long time, when a creative career got too hard, or I didn’t understand how to best pursue it, I gave up. I didn’t want the grief of losing something I’d invested so much time in only to find myself back at square one. This resulted in me getting slightly better than the average person at a myriad of things, only to drop them so I didn’t become an expert again just to lose it all.

This is how grief works. I wasn’t crying every day at the loss of my musical career, but I was basing huge life goals and decisions to sidestep future grief. It was in the shadows, and until I brought it into the light, I had no idea that I was sacrificing my dreams to avoid future grief. Take some time to evaluate your own emotions. Is there grief hiding in the shadows keeping you from moving where you need to move?

Disguised

In the same way an assassin uses disguises to fool us into thinking they are something other than they are, grief tricks us into believing it is something different.

The most common way I find my grief disguising itself is as self-preservation. Though I can’t say for certain, I am going on a limb to assume this is the most prominent way grief hides itself. I think of phrases like, “As long as I don’t invest too much time into that friendship they can't hurt me.” This was born out of over-investing in a friendship only to have them walk away in favor of someone more interesting than me. Now, do we change and grow as people, thus finding those more like-minded to us? Absolutely. But this doesn’t separate us from the grief of losing that relationship. From that point, we stop investing in others until they invest in us first. This is grief in disguise as self-preservation. Rather than work through that pain, we simply keep ourselves from feeling it ever again.

Letting grief hide in the background allows it to become something bigger than just itself.

Grief likes company

When you hide grief away, you allow it to fester and grow. Sometimes this creates layers upon layers of unprocessed grief. If left unchecked, this leads to a complex web of emotions, regrets, and defensive habits that confuse us into believing that what we have is something beyond understanding or overcoming.

Behind the desire to save myself from over-investing in others, losing the fight to succeed in a creative field, and bitterness of life situations lies grief pulling the strings. Slowly, grief surrounds itself so tightly with these other emotions that, in order to tackle the grief, we need to first unwrap the emotions surrounding it.

Essentially, grief uses these powerful emotions as protection against you processing it in a healthy and balanced way.

Grief may be lifelong

Up to this point, I have talked about how grief is sneaky and the ways that it hides itself. Now, it’s time for the hardest truth of all.

Grief never fully goes away.

That is a hard pill to swallow. We fight so hard to never experience grief in our lives because deep down we understand that it never leaves. So, what do we do? We press on.

The secret way to fix your relationship with grief is to acknowledge that it is real. Grief needs a friend, and that must be you. You need to understand why grief is part of your life and understand that no matter how hard it may be, you need to spend time with your grief. And really spend time with it. No false affirmations to make you feel good about yourself. You need to get ugly, you need to cry, and you need to stay there for a while.

Stay there as long as it takes for you to understand your grief.

When you can do this healthily, grief will no longer puppet your life. Though it will remain a constant part of your life, it will never lock you down. And just like a friend, sometimes you might need to visit that grief and cry again.

In closing

 I was honestly not going to share this, but I felt it was too perfect a way to express my journey with grief.

Early on in my marriage my wife and I had hopes of becoming parents. One day I got the news that she was pregnant, I was on cloud nine at this point. Of course, I was scared, nervous, and excited all at once. After all, how do you really prepare for raising a child? Though I am not overly expressive in my emotions, I was happy and so was my wife; this was one of her dreams. We spent time thinking of names and plotted our next course of action. Though that wouldn’t last long.

I couldn’t tell you the exact reason why, but my wife just thought that something was strange, so she went to the doctor to have things looked at. I was at work that day, so she messaged me that that was her plan and I went about my work as usual. A few hours in, I see her stop at the store. This wasn’t uncommon as she would often visit if she was going through town. This time, she wasn’t her joyful self. As she approached me she just cried, and at that moment I knew what it was. We had a miscarriage.

I didn’t know how to feel. All I knew was that I didn’t want to feel that way again. I found myself not wanting my wife to get pregnant again because I just didn’t want to have to work through that same thing again. And honestly, I took a pretty hands-off approach to working through that emotion. I thought that if I stuffed it down long enough, it would go away and life would be normal again.

Fast forward two years later and my wife is talking about a dream she had. Without revealing details, it reminded me of that loss. That’s when I finally became friends with my grief. I finally let it go, and I cried, which was long overdue. I was raised by my grandparents, so I wanted to let them know what happened. I got to their house, and before I could say hello to my grandmother I broke again. Grief was catching up for lost time. Once I finally worked through this, life was easier. I still to this day need to let myself be sad, but that sadness no longer keeps me from being present.

Long story short, it took me two years to work through this loss. I never let myself grieve, so I was never fully present in any moment surrounding that emotion. At the beginning of this post, I briefly touched on the idea that not processing grief keeps us from being in the moment. Because we want so desperately to not feel the emotions that hurt us, we avoid them at all costs. Sometimes, we even long to be with those who passed before us in hopes that we can see them again. But your story is not done, there is work yet to do. Becoming a friend to your grief allows you to fully live in each moment. It allows you to come alongside others. And it allows you to understand who you are.

And when we can do that, I think that makes the world a better place.