How I’m Not Coping With Traumatic Grief
Traumatic grief is messy. It’s disturbing, alienating, scary and just really weird. You feel everything all at once on high until your body shuts down and stops you from feeling anything. I don’t really know how to describe it because it’s all-consuming in a way that I don’t always remember what life felt like before.
On October 19th, 2021, one of my best friends was murdered in an act of femicide. And I feel like I have been trying to catch my breath ever since.
The first few weeks were a bit of a blur. A blur of tears and hugs and laughter and vigils and stories and marches and funerals and messages all saying the same thing: I’m so sorry, let me know if you need anything.
And I knew I needed something but I had no idea what. I knew that I needed the sleep I couldn’t get. The shower that was exhausting to take. A meal that would make me feel sick. A glass of water that felt unearned. A cup of coffee that felt like a cry for help. But none of those things satisfied any part of me. What I wanted was my phone to light up with a text from her telling me to watch out because Scorpio season was about to begin. Or ranting about some guy on Tinder. Or asking me if I’d start a podcast with her. I’ve never been particularly good at answering my phone. Days go by and I forget to check a single message. But it would take only half of a millisecond for me to respond to her right now. And I would become the fastest texter in the world this instant if it meant just one more conversation with her.
It’s been almost 5 months and I still feel like it’s not real. I still feel like it happened yesterday. I still feel like there’s a sick world where she reappears and it was all a social experiment. I feel like if I miss her the right way or right amount she’ll come back. That maybe if I cried or screamed in just the right way, I’d be able to prove that this was all a mistake. And she’d reappear with an art history meme in our group chat like she had never left.
When grief surrounds a homicide, you’re experiencing the most traumatic thing you’ve ever dealt with, on a completely public platform. For those first few weeks, every time I logged onto social media, or turned on the news, or the radio or existed in the city I call home, I heard her name. It was screamed by people who loved her, graffitied by people who stood for her, whispered by politicians who wanted to use her. And that’s when she became a movement. Her name was depersonalized and used a political device. And as much as I stood for the cause, my grief could never be private or quiet, because every step of the way demanded that it wasn’t. I couldn’t watch as people used her death for their own personal gain. All the while knowing that a trial was right around the corner and it would all be publicized over and over again.
Journalists reached out and asked for quotes. Asked for interviews. Used our pain and tears for clicks and likes. They asked me how I was making sense of any of it or how we justified it. But there’s no justification. There’s no relief that she’s not in any more pain. There’s no way to make it make sense. There really isn’t any “coping” with grief like this. And there’s such a clear place to put the blame. But thinking about him is something I can’t do yet. My body doesn’t let me.
They say grief has no timeline. But wow, wouldn’t it be great if it did? Of all days, I was ambushed by Valentine’s Day this year. The firsts of everything are supposed to be really hard. And I knew that would be true for birthdays, Christmas, New Year’s, anniversaries, etc. But I never expected Valentine’s Day. I don’t know how I didn’t see that coming, she was the most love obsessed person I know. And so good at expressing it. Her love was worn on her sleeve like a badge of honour and though she claimed she didn’t always know how to love, she loved more fiercely and powerfully than anyone else on this Earth. So a day devoted to love; that one hurt a little more than usual.
There are parts of traumatic grief that are inconvenient to others. I can’t focus on anything for more than about 5 minutes at a time, if I’m lucky. I’m always tired. I’m always distracted. I can’t think about anything except her. Tasks take me longer to complete. Social settings make me more anxious. A single word or gesture or look can trigger a grief spiral that feels unmerited. How do you interact with the world when you feel like a ticking time bomb? The world doesn’t stop spinning just because your world has.
And then there’s the guilt. Not that it was my fault or that I could have stopped it. But that in life I wasn’t as good as I could have been. I should have taken more pictures. Gone to more parties. Said I loved her more. Not to mention the guilt that now I have become a burden to everyone else in my life as a broken, unpredictable mess. Everyday hurts, and my loved ones are there to witness it. So I hide from them to relieve the burden which only makes the guilt worse.
There are moments where I wish that I had chosen a different college so I could have ignored all this. But regardless of how terrible the pain is now, I am so grateful for every second I got to spend with her. I’m grateful for the lessons she taught me. The stories she gave me. The inspiration to be loud and authentic and live life openly. And I am so grateful for the friends I still have from college who are the only reason these past few months have been even mildly tolerable.
I’m not someone who believes in anything religious or spiritual. Sometimes being an atheist makes it harder because I feel like I can’t ever have any closure. I don’t believe in signs from the universe or messages from beyond. But sometimes when I hear ABBA at the grocery store or see a pair of floral Doc Martens, I thank her for every moment we had and tell her I love her. Because if I had the chance to tell her one more thing, I’d say this: Je t’aimais, je t’aime et je t’aimerai.
