IT'S OKAY TO NOT BE OKAY

All it took was only12 days for me to lose everything, yeah that's right that is exactly how I felt. My dad died on the 25th of April 2015 and right after that exactly on the 13th day, my mom died holding my hand on the 7th of May 2015. I am still not sure how to process it. I have spent all these months celebrating their life and have been awed by the phenomenal bond that they shared. But as far as how it has been and will continue to affect me is something I simply don't want to face. How are we supposed to handle loss? I don't know but a dear friend of mine shared some thoughts with me and I just felt that there are somethings that we need to talk about but are never able to. As a result we carry burdens on our hearts that wear us out, eat us on the inside and don't let the world see them because no one wants to appear vulnerable. We are afraid of being hurt, yes we all are, and therefore we act like life is all "hunky dory" like one of my professor used to say. 

Life has become so fast paced and it seems like it is practically impossible to escape the vicious cycle that we are all consumed by. For many of us personal and professional boundaries have pretty much blurred because we worry about family at work and we stress over work even in bed. Everyone wants to maintain a healthy balance but is it possible ? I don't know. "Healthy" and "balance" are both relative terms, based on our own perceptions and perspectives. 

We all have suffered loss of some sort, and we all have our own internal and external mechanism of dealing with it. Some responses are automatic and some are learned through, experience, exposure and observation.

The purpose of life is death. The first time these words were uttered by a friend many years ago I did not understand what they meant. It wasn’t until recently that I understood the true depth of this sentence. When someone you love walks away from you, the pain you feel is immense. The tragedy is grave. But slowly and surely you are able to mend yourself, tend your wounds to the best of your ability. You seek acceptance of your friends and gradually you are able to find a plausible substitute for that person.

But when someone who loves you unconditionally departs from the world of living, you die with them. A piece of your soul evaporates into nothingness and there is a permanent hollow in your being that you cannot comprehend. To call that feeling pain would not do justice for those who have lost a loved one. Perhaps this feeling can be called despair, the complete opposite of hope. The awareness of death.

Each passing day doesn’t become better, it becomes worse. Each memorable moment is plagued with their absence. Each task is tinted with the temptation to give up. The loss of a loved one is not contained to the date of their death, the printing of their death certificate, nor the tombstone on their grave. Rather, it is dispersed at random intervals throughout the rest of your life, where you can always hear the silence of their steps, what could have been their animated reaction, and the countless conversations you will never have with them echo within the confines of your mind.

The presence of their absence is felt with each passing second. The seconds pile up into hours, days, and months and with each passing moment you try to hold on to them in any way possible. You visit the places they loved, talk to the people they met and hold on to their belongings as hard as you can, because you know that slowly just like your memory of them it will all fade away.

The beauty of the mind is, to be able to create alternative realities and different scenarios where your loved ones exist in your dreams, and when you wake up their death gets refreshed each time you open your eyes, and a part of you wishes to never wake up.

It is during this time that the world rears its ugly head towards you and judges. Judges if you cry too much, judges if you smile at their memory. Judges if your painful screams echo in your house, judges if you mourn in a corner in silence. Judges if you move on too fast and judges if you stay stuck in the past.

It is then that you have a choice. You can feed into the misery and despair, and enter the dark world of depression and panic attacks so that eventually everyone around you attributes your misfortune to fate. Or you can promise yourself to persevere one day at a time. There is also professional help available that people can use to learn how to grieve and strategies to maneuver loss in a healthy way and avoid from getting sucked into depression.

Whichever path you choose, you never feel whole again and believe me its ok to not be ok.