Coping with Loss

Two years.

Coping is a strange concept. You’re supposed to let go and accept that they’re not in your life anymore, that they’ve moved on, that they’ve gone to a better place. Yet, you also try your darn hardest to keep their memory alive, you don’t want to forget, you don’t dare forget.

The past week has been spent grappling with the fact that I’ve survived two years without you. Two years. 730 days I’ve gotten out of bed, survived whatever horrors the day has thrown at me, and gone back to bed. 730 days without you. 730 sunrises and sunsets that you’ve missed.

To all the people who say it gets easier with time, that “time can heal anything” — lies. Big, fat lie. It does not get easier. Rather, you learn to deal with it. You put a smile on your face everyday, even the days when all you want to do is cry. You learn to flinch less when someone asks you what your parents do. You’ve crafted an answer, a subtle one, one that most people don’t notice.

Those who don’t notice make it easy for you. You’ve mastered that first. “He was a doctor,” you say quickly, making sure to soften your voice on the “was”. Most of them don’t catch on.

But for those people who do notice, who pick up on your usage of the past tense, you’ve learned how to deal with them too.

“He passed away,” you mumble, as you ready your face and hold back the tears. Because every time you say it, it becomes real again. If you don’t say it, it’s easier to forget what happened, forget that it’s real.

You’re prepared for the instant change in their expression. Their curious, pleasant face morphs into one of sympathy. You don’t want to be looked at that way. Their eyebrows furrow, their eyes flood with concern, and the corner of their lips fall.

Yes. That’s the look. We’ve all seen it. They feel sorry for you. They’re trying to understand.

Pssh. As if they could understand, you think. They could never understand. Never. You don’t want their sympathy; you don’t even want to talk about it.

You keep it locked up in a box, like it’s some dark, foul secret. That if you speak of it, bad things will happen. That the monsters and demons that rest under your bed will creep out and torment you at night.

But through all of this, yes, you learn that coping and loss changes you — for better or worse — I can’t say, but it inevitably changes you. You can never go back to the person you once were. You can never see things the same way ever again.

The sun doesn’t look quite the same when it rises, those places you visited are never quite the same, and everyday, something, no matter how big or small, will remind you of them.

It may go unnoticed but loss, grief, and trauma changes you. You carry the loss whenever you go, consciously and unconsciously. It follows you. It looms over you, an invisible weight you didn’t even know you were carrying.

There’s a hole deep down inside you, a void that will never be filled again.

When you lose someone, you carry the holes with you. In that sense, they never ever leave you and they’re with you in one form or another, even if it hurts like hell.

But you learn to live with these holes and you grow. You become stronger, fiercer, mightier. You’re better prepared for the next time someone decides to leave a hole in your body again.