A while back, i used to think losing my father was the worst thing that could happen to me but then I discovered that grief could make you afraid of losing everyone else too because after my father died, something inside me changed.... now i don't remember deciding to withdraw from people. It happened gradually.
I stopped answering messages quickly... I turned down invitations.. I even spent more time alone and even when I was surrounded by people, it always felt somewhere far away from them like I was lost..
People would ask if I was okay and i would always say yes.... funny thing is Sometimes I even smiled when I said it but the truth was that I was terrified.
My father's death had taught me something I didn't want to learn... people can be here today and gone tomorrow.... and once I understood that, getting close to anyone began to feel dangerous.
I started thinking and my theory became that if I didn't become too attached then I wouldn't hurt so badly if they disappeared too and So I built a wall... a wall made from silence.
I stopped telling people what I was feeling... I stopped letting them see when I was struggling and when someone tried to get close... I found a way to step back.
I told myself I was protecting my heart...
I didn't realize I was also starving it...
Sometimes I would remember something ordinary... something I hadn't thought about in years and those ordinary memories would often hurt a lot and for a long time, I thought being alone was helping me heal but it wasn't...It was only teaching me how to live without letting anyone close enough to notice that I was hurting.
Then... slowly something began to change...
Someone asked how I really felt and for once I didn't say, “I'm fine.”
I actually talked...
I admitted that I was afraid...
I admitted that I missed my father...
I admitted that sometimes I was afraid to love people because I didn't know how I would survive losing them and something surprising happened....
I began to understand that perhaps I had been looking at loss from the wrong direction... I realized that Loving people doesn't guarantee that we will never lose them but refusing to love them guarantees that we miss the chance to truly have them while they are here.
That realization didn't make my grief disappear.
I still missed my father quite alright and i still had difficult days but the wall I had built around myself began to crack.
I finally allowed people sit with me even when I didn't have much to say...
I started laughing again and I eventually learnt that We cannot protect ourselves from loss by refusing to love because sometimes the bravest thing we can do after losing someone is to open our hearts again not because we are no longer afraid but because we are and we choose to love anyway...
Thanks for reading..
[Images is mine]
