An Antidote to Delayed Grief.

[let’s just keep this as WIP until the antidote works]

So, I have not been feeling like quite myself for some time now but as it grew stronger and my life took a few dramatic turns recently, the needs are demanding to be met, to pour out these emotions here, both the already processed and yet to be processed.

I now have more bandwidth than I ever had in the past 3-4 months, to sit with myself and finally process every bit of my emotions. I realised the horrible side effect of the way I was built from my teenage years – someone who wasn’t very fond of showing a tiny sign of weakness in everything they do. This, I’ve come to learn, isn’t the best soft-skill to be had in the world. It’s not hard for us fall into the trap – the I’ve got it all attitude – that eventually leads to things falling apart, losing one too many of what we’ve worked hard to build. Even when no one’s looking.

To the outsiders, words got to me that I have been perceived by a few new acquaintances to be this cold, bitter bastard. And yet to those who have shared drinks and stories or even grew up with me, I may have been presenting these charming, warm personalities who might have what it takes to always light up the room (source: my actual friends). I stopped trying to understand in which of these labelled boxes I could fit, just happy to be in the spectrum. Sometimes I just let the know-it-alls read and psychoanalyze me, then me proceeding to that ‘gosh so accurate you’re genius’ look to do my bare minimum as a social being. But really worth a fuck-all to me. Or perhaps it means one or two things about me.

So, which grief exactly? I do not know. From which I am trying to recover, or to heal, yesterday, or today. It’s a long journey one should, or is encouraged strongly, to enjoy, as opposed to what people seem to grasp about healing. Had a hunch it was about a bit of betrayal, buried with a lot of denials, and unprocessed loss of a strong figure in the past, or perhaps fears of not overdelivering and feeling inadequate to my loved ones. Or the side character longing for a new, different life. Or that my brain is exhausted of thinking, and the heart, all needing a timeout that it deserves.

So I caved in and allowed myself to not think, nor to feel. For the first time in a while now, I have been feeling not just empty again, but floating aimlessly in this vast nothingness leading to no end. I lost my drive I used to have to be who I thought I was destined for. I am evolving yes, it’s the ideal state, but I am stepping far back, trying to recalibrate the set plans I have told my brain to pursue no matter the weather.

In the long quest of discovering the antidote, among many, these are some of the ingredients I think might work:

1. back to my old solo routine
2. run again, at a great pace
3. dismiss all the scenarios in my head
4. allow one sad day each week no matter how busy
5. stop over-complying to other people’s emotions
6. do random shit –> I have not had the chance to
7. deactivate IG, make less tiktoks
8. meet new, interesting folks again, learn and experience
9. meet nature again where you feel the safest, the sea, the beach, or the waterfalls on that mountain you dream of
10. talk to therapist, open up more how you’re not superman
11. endless caffeine and alcohol-induced convos
12. maybe don’t do #11
13. catch up with your exes and long lost friends
14. write more? try singing again? learn instrument?

Still experimenting if all these would work, but probably through miles of walk. a few songs on repeat. endless convincing. filling up your empty heart with things hoping that the brain would just pick up somehow.