Grief

Grief does funny things to you.

If you're not careful, it feeds.

I used to be a walking, talking Barbie doll - perfect smile plastered to my face because nothing had ever happened to wipe it away. My makeup was always perfect. My clothes showed all curves. I wore heels.

That girl is gone.

Grief has sucked her dry. She doesn't have the need or energy even to take showers.

Makeup is something that I do rarely, and then only because my mama instilled in me at a very young age that all good women wear makeup. Clothes are comfortable now, not aesthetic. Heels are a thing of the past.

I've lost chunks of my life to grief - periods I can't remember.The amnesia is most likely a survival mechanism employed by my much smarter brain. Remembering would serve only darkness, and my brain needs the light to survive.

When someone I love takes too long to come home, I begin to fear. What if they're dying? What if I never see them again? The fear leads to tears I can neither understand nor control.

And now I wonder ... is it truly better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all? Who said that? I'm not sure, and don't feel like looking it up, but I'm relatively certain that person never lost someone permanently. I would rather have not loved them, never met them, than to feel this permanent black hole in my heart, pulling into it all happiness, all hope, leaving only fear, lust, anger - all the baser emotions, the ones that ensure I will live. I may do it unhappily, but I will live, and that's all my body wants - to continue being.

They say that time heals, that eventually you begin to mend, to forget. It isn't true. Time is not a bandaid or a salve. Time does not stitch together the jagged pieces inside you. Time doesn't even let you remember in peace. The memories still feel like a knife in my throat, an arrow through my heart. Time doesn't dry your tears, it only ensures you run out, dry up like you're lost in the Sahara.

Grief is worse than depression. Grief cannot be dampened by pills or lanced with happiness. Grief is an ever-present demon, gnawing at your insides, making you ill. Depression only numbs. Grief weakens. It makes you want to scream, makes you feel like you are screaming but no one can hear, makes you scared of the future.

I don't think about my future anymore. I don't dream of medical school or residency. I don't look forward to my career with excitement. I don't think about the classes I will be taking in a few months, or the movies I want to see. I don't think about children or grandchildren. It is hard enough to be in the present, to live through the pain of right now. All that future pain seems like a punishment, and in true Deidra-brain fashion, my mind has blocked it out.

Grief has taken away the Barbie in me. Barbie-Deidra was never equipped to handle it. Even Grieving-Deidra isn't equipped to handle it. I've made primitive weapons to fight it away, but grief is a monster that cannot be defeated with the puny slings and arrows my mind doles up.

I'm tired of fighting. Can't I just give in?