Grief is actually LOVE

Grieving is healing. I wish I had known this earlier.

I think if there is one thing all of us are constantly fearful of is losing a loved one ( in general or to death) and this fear stems from our love for them. The more you are attached, the more you love someone, the more fearful you become. I will not say the fear is irrational, nothing which comes out of love will ever be irrational to be. It is not irrational, not pointless, you are not unreasonable either. I understand, we all do, whatever happens, happens or whatever is meant to happen will happen but in the end we are all humans.

For the longest time, I have had this fear too, I still do. Sure, time and again I make myself understand the reasoning and logic and whatever is meant to happen will happen, live in the present etc etc but does that stop me from worrying? No. I’ll talk about a specific incident here. When I lost someone very close to me to death, I held myself back from grieving I think. I mean I remember I, at first, sort of did not want to accept that it happened, that I will not be able to feel the physical presence of this person anymore. I think part of the denial came from the my need to control everything and resistance from change. When I pushed myself to see the reality and come to terms with it, I shut myself down, detached, engrossed myself in work, leaving no time to think or mourn over the loss. I held things inside of me for so long, suppressed my emotions, avoided them that I almost developed this bitterness, a feeling of resentment within me. I also held myself responsible, I craved for that one last meeting, one last touch, one last conversation and what not. I knew I wasn’t getting any of it. But I think no matter how hard I tried, I was still grieving, subconsciously, because you grieve when you love. She would cross my mind everyday. I was not just expressing it in any form.

I tried my best to escape from what I was feeling, my need to grieve, to mourn, but as fate would have it, I had the misfortune of staying complete idle for about 2 months and the person I missed the most, the presence I missed the most was of this person. The emotions I had bottled up came out in different forms, aggression, frustration, tears, sometimes, infact still there are days I would long for her presence, her wrinkled fingers and little pecks against my cheeks, her smiling face and the conversations I cherished most with her.

I am no expert on the subject, but I think we hold ourselves back from grieving because we think we would lose whatever of that person is left within us. I mean that could be a possibility. It took me almost 3 years to write this, to understand the whole process even to the extent I do today.

Grief is overwhelming and it brings with itself — rage, fear, vulnerability, remorse and shame. The deep sorrow that is caused by the loss is never given an opportunity to be felt, to communicate with you, to tell you why it hurts, to allow you to heal. To heal, it’s important to grieve. Feel everything you can, feel it completely, and then free it, don’t let it consume you. When you free it, it will free you.

I think now I understand, I’m not saying I’m at peace with it or I will not be fearful or nothing will hurt me from now on. Ofcourse, not. When I say I understand, I mean if we grieve, we do not lose anything, we do not lose the person from within us. You don’t ever truly lose that which you love. The loss in not the end of love. It’s not an end but transition and you get to choose, easier said than done, what you allow to grow inside you. Grief is actually love, it’s been love all along, love with nowhere to go, all the love you want to give but cannot. Grief is actually love, disguised as sorrow. All that unspent love gathers in your heart and that is why it feels heavy, it feels overwhelming.

Because you grieve when you love and it’s important that you do. It’s important that you feel the sorrow, so that you can release it, you can release the grief and the friends it bring — and you can free yourself. Remember, love is what remains, even after you grief, whatever is left of the person, all the love you ever had for the person will continue to exist inside of you because love grows. And if you can, and I think you should, give a lot of it to yourself, to people around you, in form of compassion, passion, empathy, kindness and all forms of love.

Because even after everything begins to fade, love is what remains.

Inspired from a post by @The Artidote on Instagram.