Unhaunting: Making Friends with Grief

Or: Fine. I’ll Stop Pretending Everything is Okay.

Look, lets get it right out of the way.

Grief and I are not exactly friends right now. I have always been fascinated by it. How it sinks into our bones and twists our intestines in such a specific, familiar way. 

But we aren’t friends. 

I’ve tried to make friends, but that is shockingly hard to do when you can’t quite acknowledge someone. 

If Grief were a person, we’d wave at a party, and then I would spend the rest of the night hoping they wouldn’t come speak to me, and then tell my therapist “Oh yeah! I just saw Grief the other night! They seem to be doing well. I’m happy for them.” 

Turns out, that’s not how to make friends. 

Yadi was always better at the friends part of things than I was. 

And I think, maybe, this is why I’m having such a hard time with Grief right now.

Every time I want to talk about Yadi, Grief wants to be involved.

So I stop talking about him. Or only do so briefly.

The more I try to ignore Grief, the more I stop thinking about Yadi. And I don’t want to do that. I both want and need to remember him.
Besides, the more I ignore it, the louder Grief becomes. It rattles windows, throws pots, and flickers the lights in my head. 

So, he were are. 

Not exactly exorcising Grief, but learning how to coexist. Hopefully.

We’ll see. 

But to start making friends, I suppose it’s time to talk about Yadi.