"it simply disguises itself in things"

on resentment and grief

i’m studying a module on mortality this semester. it wasn’t intentional, or my first choice, but the feminist language module i chose got cancelled, so i picked this one instead.

this week, my lectures were on grief. i didn’t go to my lectures and instead did the lecture notes from home. my bedroom is the place where all grief is contained so the lecture hall didn’t feel like the right place to sit and absorb that information.

i find it hard to think of grief as abstract because it feels like a cloak i wear and lug around every single day. in school, i was known and established as “the girl whose mum died” and now, out of school, i am still known as that. when i talk about grief, sometimes a lot of people resonate. and when anyone needs a story or a mirror to look into, something that reflects their own grief, i become that mirror.

i wouldn’t say that i feel tired from talking about grief, because there’s always so much to say, but i feel resentful. something which is often viewed as negative and somewhat taboo, is always attached to me. it makes me feel like i am negative or taboo. contrary to popular perception, i find talking about death very hard. which is odd because maybe to you, it looks like it comes easily to me. “grief is love with nowhere to go,” i wish i could talk about love, but somehow, always, the thing that sticks is the grief.

my resentment is mainly directed towards my mum. she didn’t choose to die but nowadays, i feel angry at her because she’d made a false promise that she wouldn’t leave, that she’d always be by my side, and she’s not. my resentment doesn’t have anywhere to go because luckily for her, she’s dead. and so, the resentment i have towards her, the resentment that fills my body like a slow and seeping poison, cannot be expelled, only contained. i feel angry not only because she left me, but because i have to deal with the effects of that every single day. when i am sad, i have to deal with it myself. when i lack confidence, i have to deal with it myself. when i feel small, i have to deal with it myself. i cannot go to her as a mother. she left me to mother myself, and for that, i cannot forgive her.

i wish i could write beautiful poetic pieces about grief and how it is merely just love and longing. i wish i could write long essays with beautiful metaphors about how much i love and miss her and despite it all, despite how tough it is, it’ll all be ok in the end. but for me, there hasn’t been an end and i don’t think there ever will be.

luna carmoon when describing her debut feature film ‘hoard’, has said that it is “a tale of how grief doesn't really ever disappear over time it simply disguises itself in things.” the first time i heard her say that, i felt completely understood. maybe grief isn’t just a cloak that we wear on the outside, but actually a poison or substance that seeps out of us unknowingly and stains everything we touch. even if that stain is invisible. grief, in many ways, is a way of being, because once you’ve encountered it you cannot go back to the time that you hadn’t .

i think so much of my resentment comes from the fact that my outlook of the world was completely shattered as a child. i wasn’t able or allowed to see the world from a childlike perspective as a child. it feels cruel, especially since most people would say that it’s unfair for me to blame that on someone who couldn’t control their illness. cancer survival often feels like the lottery. you either survive or you don’t. it doesn’t discriminate, but somehow, for those of us who are left behind, it can feel like a personal attack that the person we love is no longer with us.

i am roughly half the age my mum was when she died. recently, i’ve started to walk around with the feeling that i’ve lived half my life already. it is a bizarre feeling to explain to people. i realise now how young she was. i cannot imagine trying to fit everything i want to do ever, into the next 21/22 years. but this is exactly what i mean when i say that grief follows me everywhere. i cannot think about my own age without being confronted with the reality of hers. i do not exist with death and grief being an abstract thing. i cannot read stories and literature on grief without inserting myself into the narrative. perhaps that is narcissistic, i apologise if it is.

i’ve spent the last year trying to run away from myself and the events of my life, most specifically, trying to eradicate my grief. i thought that if i could shed myself of previous labels and perceptions, if i could reinvent myself ten times over, if i could meet new people who had no understanding or previous outlook on who i was, then things would start working in my favour. but somehow, in my attempt to run away from it all, i have managed to consolidate and establish myself as “the girl whose mum died” once more. the irony is, in my attempt to run and escape that label, and with the isolation and introspection that it has brought, i fell into the arms of grief. in my despair and longing for a new friend, i found myself in the arms of an old one. one, despite how far i would run, would never leave my side.

i haven’t necessarily been running away from grief, but rather external and internal perceptions of what that looks like. sometimes we trick ourselves into thinking that if we run away from the past we can somehow change it. we let ourselves believe that the further we can get away from it, through whatever means, that we are different, or it was different. life changes of course, and so does grief, but it is never linear or predictable. the people that i admire the most, are the ones that can look the past in the eyes and simply say “ok”. like, ok, it happened. that’s it.

i think for so long in my head and perhaps from what i’ve internalised from the outer world, that there is “good grief” and “bad grief”, when actually there’s only “grief”. it just exists, it’s just a fact, a given, it’s not something you can shape or mould. our perception or how we deal with it can vary, but that doesn’t change the thing itself. the past is unchanging. our perceptions or how we reflect on it can change, but it is simply just the past. grief is just grief. and i cannot change that.