The worst thing they ever said was “we don’t know why these things happen”. That was a school counselor I went to, looking for resources. He just repeated that. I tried to tell him, no, I do know why these things happen. The heart stops beating. The breath slows and stops. The oxygen couldn’t pass through. Death doesn’t confuse me. I know why it happened.

The others are just as hard. “She’s with you in your heart.” I can’t even think of other examples, because they’re all the same. They’re trying to take her from me. Now that she’s dead, she’s mine. My sister that I knew will always be my sister. I never have to share her with time or location or reality. She’s mine, and they’re trying to share her with me. The worst part is that I have to thank them for it. 

This isn’t just grieving. It’s my life. My entire, all-encompassing life. All of my religion is with her. The cycles, the goddess, I believe because of the reality we shared. Every thing I do. Every word I say. It’s all from the eternal bind we have together now. I can’t have a moment of quiet and move on, like you expect me to do when you console me. This is my entire reality.

Once a woman who knew my grandmother, though I’d met her, just hugged me and wouldn’t let go. Normally that would be sweet to me, but I had to move on. Really, I was hungry and trying to get to lunch. She just clung to me, even when I tried to push her away. A 70 year old woman, and she’s living her grief vicariously through me. She didn’t console herself, so she projects herself onto me and does it posthumously. Again, I have to thank her.

It’s always about them. They need to apologize to me or express sympathy, because otherwise they would feel weird. When I tell them, it’s fine, because I’m showing a wound and in doing so, asking for a little remedy. A band-aid there, some hydrogen peroxide there. It’s just when they find out, because I had to tell them or someone else did. When a stranger trying to get to know me asks if I have siblings. When it’s someone who was talking to my grandparents. Shut UP!

Say something if I share with you. When a person I barely know purposefully seeks me out because they want to give me their condolences or something, they’re hurting me, because they’re bringing up the most painful thing to ever happen to me and expecting me to be gracious and thankful. This is my grief! If I want to share with someone, that’s my business! Don’t assume you have a right to my grief. Never put me on the spot and expect me to cry tears of relief because you, oh messiah, of prophet of infinite wisdom, have said your piece to me, expecting that they just made it all better. Jesus himself could come down and whisper to me the secrets of death and pain and the universe, and I’d just feel tired. You’re not Jesus. When you say you’re so sorry, or express disbelief, you’re stabbing me. I can’t have disbelief. Don’t expect me to agree with you.

I wish that, instead of this, friends who know me would text once and a while and say “thinking of you”. That the quiet offers of support would continue past the first week.

Lastly, I’d like to extend a big fuck you to the therapist who, when I was deep in anticipatory grief two years before the death, condescended me and tried to make me exposure-therapy out of what she deemed an ‘irrational fear’. Fear this fist!