The Chelsey Diaries

No one could possibly understand me
Mine is different.
Mine is worse
Mine isn’t as bad
Mine is too new
Mine has been there for years
I don’t like talking about it
I need to always talk about it
He was old so it’s different
She was young so it’s different.

I used to think it was grief that separated me from the rest of the world. The thing that made me someone no one could love, or someone who couldn’t love others. I used to think that my desire to be with the dead tore me completely from the living.
I thought that it was a lost war for someone to try and get to know all of the pieces that I have become.

As I move forward (and sometimes backwards) and as I get to know my grief as intimately as I would a partner, I start to feel that draw back to the warm blooded.

When I started this blog, it was about me. It was my journey through a grief no one could understand. It was my way of coping, my therapy, my vice. I was learning about myself, I was learning about my pain, but what I didn’t know was that I was also learning about you and I was learning about yours too. Though comments, shares, emails and private messages I have learned more about who you are. I have learned more about your struggles, your coping, your heart, your pieces. And with each connection I understand myself a little better too. If I think that your pieces are worth the effort ( tenfold ) then maybe mine are too. If I see the beauty behind your broken, the depth that makes you who you are, maybe someone will be able to see that in me.

We are not so different, you and I. It is our loss that drives us to connect, even when we think connecting is the last thing we want to do. Our souls are searching for each other, for someone else who finds a way to do the things that we still can’t. We are searching to find someone who can speak our thoughts because our mouths open but words wont come out and to find someone who is walking the path in front of us so they can scream out words of warning when something jumps out from the darkness that surrounds us.
We are not so different, you and I.

So to my brothers and sisters in grief, I say this:

I understand you. Even if you don’t want to be understood.
Our grief may be different in nature, but it is the same in our hearts
I know that you sometimes feel like you are alone on a sinking life boat in the middle of a raging ocean, and sometimes thats exactly where you want to be, but whether you like it or not, I am the life boat. I know it may seem like we are sinking, but sometimes the water below us gets to be too much for me too, and so I let some in, but I promise that I will not let you sink, because there is someone who is the lifeboat for me, and they wont let me sink either.
If you need to be alone. Be alone. But know I am there.
If you need to be surrounded, ask me to surround you.
I will not hold you to anything, because being accountable when grieving is really, really hard. Wanna hang out? Chat? Facetime? Call? Change your mind 5 minutes later? Totally cool, we can try again tomorrow.
Simply, forcefully and sympathetically; SAME. Me too. it’s complete shit, right?

It’s easy to label us and say “the fear of connection is a direct result from the fear of losing again.” but I don’t think that’s true. I think the fear of connection, when someone is grieving(in any way, for anything), is a direct result of not understanding your grief. If I don’t understand my grief, how can I explain it? If I don’t understand my own grief, how can I begin to understand someone else’s. I think we feel like we need to have the answers before we ask the questions. Like we need to be able to let everyone know that we are doing fine before we have even told them we are struggling. We all feel like we need to be the glorious, heart warming “and I can still feel them surrounding me as I move through this earth, enjoying each moment as they come and never forgetting to say thank you to those watching from above-The End” to the story instead of the chapter full of pain and hopelessness and ugliness and despair, before we let someone read our book.

Open up your pages.

You do not have to over come before we decide to embrace one another. You do not have to have the answers to the questions that will  inevitably be asked.
“I don’t know” is powerful in it’s honesty and courageous in its acknowledgement.
“I am not okay” is the silent swing of a wrecking ball as it barrels toward the walls we think protect us.

You are not alone.
If we all stand in a circle and link arms. If we bend forward letting all of our grief equally disperse onto the backs of the masses, we will bear it together. We will hold up longer and we will move together as one entity sheltering, embracing, and carrying the load that this world has put on us.
but we will not do it alone.

You will not do it alone.

I use to think grief was what separated me from the rest of the world, and now I know it is what makes me a living, breathing, bleeding part of it.

Live, breathe and bleed with me.

I gotchu, babe.

Chelsey xo