The After Effect
Love your friends was a very heartfelt post about some things that happened when I was only 16. It was an incredibly strange time in my life. This post is more about the aftereffect of losing friends. I felt that it was the right time to write it as recently a couple of my friends lost someone they loved dearly and for me, it has been many years since my close friends died. I hope that this blog post provides comfort for anyone reading this.
While I'm writing this, it has been just over two years since Mollie passed and a year and 10 months since we lost Natasha. It's been a strange few years in my life, to be honest. Two breaks up and others in my life have passed away. When so much grief happens in such a short space of time, it can bring along with it many negative feelings. I'm not a stranger to bad thoughts and bad times. Each and every day I miss Mollie and Natasha and long for them to be here again. At the same time, it makes me feel almost lucky to be living and gives me a kick to live every day that I can to the fullest. To travel, to go to gigs, to learn new skills, and to meet new people. Recently I moved to university to study journalism with an unconditional offer from Leeds Beckett. It's so surreal to be here as I wasn't sure if I could even get to this point in my life. For now, at least, I am determined to make some sort of difference in the world.
Photography has grown to be one of my passions over the past year and a half. Thank god it did. I don't know where I'd be in my career of becoming a journalist without it! It's been a very special thing to fall in love with. My uni room is covered in photos of friends and photos I've taken of them. Since 2016, I've collected all sorts of memories to put into scrapbooks and photo albums. Reading them brings a certain amount of joy and being able to reminisce on things that might have been forgotten otherwise. Reading about and remembering memories from secondary school is incredibly nostalgic. Life wasn't perfect then by any means but it was different and there wasn't anyone to miss.
The last time I saw Tasha, we hung out with our friend for the day since we hadn't all seen each other since school had ended about a month and a half before. It was a very lovely day if I'm honest and I'm glad to have spent that time with her. She hugged me goodbye before I got onto the bus and we promised to see each other again whenever I returned to Milton Keynes. Sadly, we never did. Hold onto your friends while you can. She passed very unexpectedly about 4 months later. Grief is something that we aren't brought up learning how to deal with it. I hope she knows how loved she will always be.
It's a strange painful thing loss. Sometimes I look at people in their face and feel I have already lost them, I sometimes don't understand why we love people, or why people go all in with love, doesn't that just make it all the more painful when they die? I get afraid of loving people fully, knowing that at any moment they may not be here. Yet at the same time, the haunting thought of 'I could have loved them more' seems ever more so painful, because by then it's too late. It's difficult thinking of the living dying. As I envision my grandmas smile my eyes prick with tears as I think of how there could be a time she won't be here anymore. But it's strange. Knowing the limited nature of human beings, I don't know how to find balance, how can I know I'm enjoying some ones presence enough while they are alive? How can I know that I have loved all I can before I close my eyes before I fall asleep. Regrets seem inevitable. I feel like I should spend my every second with the people who may die soon, but everyone is going to die and the scary thing is not knowing when. It seems like an impossible thing, knowing if I loved them enough to not be filled with regret. The thoughts torture me at times, the inevitability of it all and the unshakable fog of the unknown. I think it's pretty cool you're openly talking about death, grief and loss. Now we can cry about it together rather than alone.
ReplyDeleteThere's an artist who lost close friends at a young age, her name is Grimes, I really like her music, loss and longing is concepts she captures in songs, on Genius she explains the meanings to some of the lyrics. We can find some solace in mutual pain and struggle. Let our mutuality be the strength that keeps us rolling along together. When we look up at the stars, we give a little smile through our tears, because we know we're not alone in this painful yet beautiful world. There's always someone looking up at those same twinkling lights. Pain is not life but a part of it, we can get lost in it's deep crashing seas sometimes. Keep it tumultuous.
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