Grief Chaos

22nd February 2017: A Journal Entry of Early Grief.

I’ve created an invisible chaos dam and I’m holding it up with all my strength. After a while cracks started to show and the chaos started to leak. Then other people’s chaos flooded out and I was powerless to control it. I helped them to shore but forgot to save myself, so I started to drown.

Grief is chaos; It reins devastation on those left behind. One minute there is dullness and the next an outburst of anger. I can sink into despair, only to laugh at the pointlessness of death. I sobbed until the skin under my eyes became sore and in one breath, I turned into an unemotional statue staring blankly into space.

I feel chaos is a good word to describe grief because it’s not a clear line from start to end. Instead, it’s a dark tangled web of erratic emotions and reactions. Sometimes, I long for a constant state of sadness, as the numbness can be unsettling. My reflexes are slower and whenever I force grief away, it crashes back like the sea during a turbulent storm. I tried to run away but it always found me.

It’s awful to navigate grief and my rational mind says it’s a necessary process to go through. The trouble is, my irrational-trying-to-make-sense-of-it brain is in the steering wheel. All I want is to find my way back to my life Simon but the road there no longer exists. I have no choice but to go on and feel the chaos in all its dark glory.

Chaos will reign for a while as I can’t control my outbursts, my fears and my overwhelming loss for him. I need time to allow myself to go through it to create a new normal, whatever that will be. Simon once told me to embrace the chaos in life but I don’t believe this is what he meant for me to do.

Thank you for reading

Please leave a comment on your thoughts on grief. I’m taking my grief journal and posting it here. I still have grief, but my in a different place from where I was when I wrote this.

How does your grief journey affect you?