yaaad aa rahi hai. yaad aane se, tere jaane se, jaaan jaa rahi hai.
About the people who are gone, no other way to say it. It is hard for the one that's left behind with remnants of what life was with them, when they were not gone - the good and the bad. It's hard to not miss that, to not long for it, to not have regrets about what you could've done, or perhaps what you should've done. And on top of it all, you miss them. Just their existence around you implicit in small everyday nothings. Which makes it all hurt so much more. You feel selfish and even guilty for missing them and you try to console yourself by saying things like "at least they went peacefully, yk?" "at least they went the way they wanted to." "I think they knew it was time on some level." But you didn't. Even if you spend trying to be emotionally prepared for it, even if all logic dictates their passing, even though every inch of your being knows that it's any minute now, you push that feeling down so that it isn't real. And then suddenly it is. You put on a brave face, people call and give condolences - maybe heartfelt, maybe empty, maybe because that's what society has taught us to do. To show that you care. But I don't care about it in that moment? All I need to do is get away, go somewhere where I can wail and scream in hopes that maybe they can listen to it and reply so that I can for a split second feel that they're still here. But you don't get to grieve the way you want to.
All this grief, not let out - just stays with you. Pushed deep down to the depths in your heart - I think it's the heart - so that they don't cross your mind. So that it doesn't hurt. So that the memories that were painted pink in love do not get repainted grey in grief. They say time heals grief, makes it smaller, makes it hurt less. I don't agree. I saw an image depicting grief as a circle moving in random patterns in the confines of a square i.e. you, with one switch that the ball of grief touches ever so often. Initially, the circle is big and it's movement leads it to that button frequently and that interaction represents everytime it hurts. Overtime, the square remains constant while the circle gets smaller and smaller, still moving randomly around the square with all it's power but naturally, the frequency of the touch is decreased. It doesn't mean the pain and the hurt you feel is any less when that happens, you feel that grief as intensely as you did earlier. It just doesn't happen that often. You don't think about them as much as you used to.
In trying to avoid this hurt and pain, the grief stays pushed down and you try not to think about it. But slowly you realise that you're forgetting about it. Forgetting them. But I don't want to forget them. I want this grief to stay with me because I want them to stay with me, whichever form that may take. In my phone's wallpaper or the way my mole shows when I smile or the way I destroy people at flash. This idea of my grief being the love I have nowhere to put is what makes it slightly better. The only real statement that gives some form of comfort the condolences aspired for. For what is grief if not love persevering? Their feeling continues to exist in the small everyday nothings, different nothings, through me. Because the me I am is the me they made me, with their love.