The Ghost of Grief

Grief is normally throught about in connection to losing a loved one or a beloved pet. But to finish off my little buried emotions series,  I'm looking at the grief connected to lost opportunities, lost time and life pre illness. Grief itself is very complicated, we all experience and deal with it differently, and by no means am I comparing the loss of a loved one to not being able to go for a hike with friends. 

Grief can disguise itself in many ways, including some of the other emotions I've covered the last few weeks, but to name a few - sadness, anger, fear numbness, even exhaustion. So what do I mean by all of this? 

I suppose it's easier to summarise as a list of questions -

 'what if I were well'

'we could have done this that and the other'

'we'd have done that bucket list trip by now' 'surely I'd have had a promotion or 2 by now and have the financial standing to afford the next step up on the housing ladder'

Even 'maybe we'd have been trying for kids by now' - but I'm going to save this topic for another day. 

Losing the opportunity to do something exciting or go somewhere you've dreamed of, or putting the next life step on hold because of how you're limited physically is immensely frustrating. Theres also a small part of me that grieves for what could be if my body were behaving itself, or I'd had the right intervention for my mental health and trauma before the sum of it made my body say 'no more'. But this is where I catch myself and say 'just because you can't right now, doesn't mean you won't ever', which I'll be honest doesn't always work, but it does snap me out of the precipice of a doom spiral. 

It's easy to look back with hindsight and see where things went wrong and should have had intervention, but that's not the reality we're faced with. Grieving for what could of been is natural, but it could easily become your default mode. This is where hope and progress and motivation come in and whip the rug from under grief, and the other buried emotions in this series', feet. Without hope and motivation to get better, you likely get stuck. Also, any small progress is a win, even if it's hard won, like being able to walk a little faster and a little further. The small wins are our best weapons in the arsenal against the darker side of long term illness. 

Hopefully that all makes sense, as it's not the easiest to put these feelings into words. But, I guess that's another sign of being human? 

Ta ta for now!