Grief is a Weighted Blanket

I have spent so much of my life preparing for grief

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Grief feels like a weighted blanket you can’t take off. It’s warming, even comforting in some ways—a cocoon. It is both expansive and confining.

I’ve been thinking (and feeling) a lot about grief as of late, but truth be told, I’m always thinking/feeling about grief. It knits itself in my bones: ancestral grief, community grief, personal grief, world grief, the grief of one moment ending and another beginning, and conversely the grief of one moment beginning and another ending. How do we make room for it all? How do we continue to live while perpetually falling apart?

I’ve often felt like I wasn’t made for this world. I know I’m not alone in this feeling. It is all too much for those of us who are sensitive and feel deeply. There is grief in every moment, every breath. I’m clingy. I grasp too much. I think I have control, but I don’t. Similar to my anxiety, I am often in a chronic state of grief. I attempt to “prepare” for change. I attempt to “prepare” for loss. I’ve been doing this since my parent’s divorce. I’ve been doing this since I was bullied in high school. I’ve been doing this since I was cheated on by an ex-boyfriend. I’ve been doing this since loved ones have passed on etc, etc, etc.

But when you “prepare,” you feel the pain at least twice: during the preparation and during the actual event. I would argue you feel the pain a third time, too—during the aftermath of the event. It’s like feeling the aftershock of an earthquake. In the Wikipedia definition for “Earthquake,” it reads: “…the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves.”

Grief is a sudden release of energy; of love, and we can’t prepare for it. We don’t need to, but it’s human nature to to think (and try) to protect ourselves from pain.

I have spent so much of my life preparing for grief. I have been in a constant state of baking this pain, inhaling its sweet warmth coupled with bitterness. But when the event or thing happens—when it’s ready to come out of the oven—I’m never actually prepared. The preparations only serve to hurt me.

Life is always ebbing and flowing. Change is inevitable. No feeling, no experience lasts forever. This is difficult to comprehend sometimes: the loss/lack of control we feel when we truly look at our lives.

Grief is everywhere inside and outside of ourselves. We can’t push it away. We can’t prepare for it. That’s a gift. We must let it come, without waiting for it. We must feel it all. Tha’s what I’m trying to do, anyways.

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