Bath Musings ep.04 || "Grief has no direction."

Bath Products Used: Dr Teal's Pure Epsom Salt Soothe & Sleep Lavender Foaming Bath

Songs Listened To: Someone You Loved by Lewis Capaldi

Happier by Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist Cast

Can't Help Falling In Love by Elvis Presley 

Minutes Wasted: Over 60.

Grief is like trying to walk through a balloon filled paddling pool, each balloon blown up with a sudden blast of sadness. Each day brings forth another walk through the pool, and you will inevitably step on some of those filled suckers. It's painful, tiring, and results in exhausting your brain and heart. It has now been almost a year since my Grandma has passed away, and I'm so very tired. It seems silly as I'm not in the UK, her home, I had moved so far away from her and the rest of my family. But that's just growing up, right? Becoming an adult means making sacrifices for your happiness, and mine was the entirety of my past. Yet I feel so... guilty.

Everyone knows the five stages of grief because of how many times entertainment has brought it up to us:

• Shock/denial
• Bargaining 
• Anger
• Depression
• Acceptance 

What utter bullshit. As a planner I mentally felt prepared to go through all of these stages when I got told that she had passed away. Yet, nothing was or is in that order. Grief is messy, unmanageable, and something that you can't even comprehend as you go through it.

I sat there at her funeral and felt internally pissed off at all of the people that dared to sit there and mourn her after partly making her life miserable on occasion. I sat there and smiled during her wake, making chit-chat that was suited more at a celebrated event than a time of mourning. I smiled as people wanted a family photo, talked about memories of her with a little laugh-acting as though we weren't all breaking inside at the way we now spoke of her in past tense. I sat there and thought that I was in the anger phase, but hadn't I been crying myself to sleep every night? Wait, wasn't that depression? But that meant that I had foregone the bargaining phase. What was I bargaining? Was I meant to be on my knees each night wishing for her return? I didn't and don't believe in God, or heaven, or anything after you pass away. Should I of asked someone who was religious to pray for me?

This was what I felt during the day that my Grandma got cremated. I partly wanted to see her coffin get lowered to prove the loss as it truly didn't feel real. I say that, 4 months later, with it still not feeling real. I won't say it's harder for me, as I know being in a place that she once was everyday is much harder, but it's a different kind of mourning when you do it from so far away. It's easy for me to believe, and forget, that she's gone for good. I dream of her each night, some dreams are of us all realising that she isn't in fact dead and that we were all super dumb to even think that. I dream of waiting to bury her, as everyone around me tells me that she is gone. I can live in a life of make believe so easily, that it feels mighty tempting to do just that.

Grief is never easy, nor is it understandable.

If you're currently dealing with grief, I wish I had advice for you but I really don't. All I can say is this.. It isn't going to be easy, or something you can feel through a steady motion. It's going to be rocky, and you'll feel alone as everyone is either suffering through their own grief or people form the outside of it just won't be able to understand. Once the motions of the funeral and 'condolences' are done, they will forget that you're in a grieving process and that will be the hard part. You'll feel forgotten, you'll fear that they will forget the person that you lost. You, alone, will have to carry the memory. It will become a part of you, everything will feel a little heavy and there isn't a solution to help ease that.

I started this blog post with no point, and I'm ending it the same. This is literally the problem with my brain currently. It's muddled and not making any sense, it has no direction. Just a lot of words that mean nothing. If you've had any experience with grief and have any advice, I would be eternally grateful.