I feel like I’ve always had kind of a weird relationship with grief. A strange, extremely intimate and yet utterly dissociated kinship. I wrote in my last piece I think (or at least when talking about these things to my therapist I know I’ve mentioned it), about how I’ve always kinda lived in this state of heartbreak. Sometimes it’s severe and sometimes it’s mild and what I like to call “passive heartache,” but I can honestly say that I don’t think that, at least until I started Trauma Therapy, there has been a time in my life that my heart wasn’t at least a little broken. And, of course, especially if you’ve read my previous works, you know that stems from just being so terribly broken in so many ways at such a young age. But it meant that my relationship with grief was different than most peoples. It was so familiar because I lived with it every moment of every day. But also because of that, especially when things got intense, I just disconnected from my feelings and my body and floated off to somewhere else in various types of dissociative episodes and states. Just… disconnect entirely then you don’t have to feel the bad things, especially when you’re already kinda worn down because you’ve been living with this every day anyhow. It’d be kind of like walking around with a head cold every day for a year, then getting the flu. On one hand you’re kind of used to this bullshit, but on the other hand, your immune system is like “fuck it, I quit. You’re on your own with this one, mate. Sorry.” Same, but with feels.

So I’ve always felt a bit tragic. A bit broken. A bit thrown away and unlovable. Unwanted. And so on. Forever in the shallow end of grief. So when things happen like people dying, it’s just kinda like… oh, that’s sad, but eh, such is life. It’s part of the cycle, and being upset isn’t going to help anything. Best to just keep on keeping on. And so I would. I’ve lost a LOT of people in my life, both to death and to choice. I have made good choices to distance myself from people who have spent years hurting me. Other people have chosen to leave me for one reason or another (another call back to my last entry, to an extent). And then people die, as mortal beings do. I think I have lost well over a dozen people I love or care about to death at this point in my life. And this ol’ marble just keeps on spinning.

This year has been a really hard one on me, both in regards to my health, some fairly significant things in my personal life, but also regarding death. Processing the loss of my mother, losing a childhood friend, losing one of my dear friends of nearly a decade and, two weeks later, one of my best friends and former partners of almost a year. And at each loss-point, I try and tell myself “it’s okay Farrah, this is part of the cycle. This is how life works. Everything comes and goes, ebbs and flows. It’s okay.” But each time it hits a little harder and a little closer. And a little harder, and a little closer. And each thing that’s happened this year has knocked me down a little more, till I’m on my hands and knees in the gravel and dirt, spitting out blood, tears and mascara streaking my face, trying to stand up, catch my breath, and still be there for the few people I have left.

I keep coming back to this story, or this idea that everyone leaves. One way or another, you know? Everyone eventually goes away, willingly or otherwise, and I’m left alone, abandoned, thrown away, or just sanding with my heart in my hands in a cold, empty alleyway with nowhere left to go. And yeah, I mean, it’s not wrong. But when I talked to my therapist about it she reminded me that black-and-white thinking isn’t helpful. That, yeah, everyone does eventually go away. Sure. That’s life. But people also come into our lives. They also stay for a while. Beautiful things also happen. Wonderful things. Wonderful people who don’t break you just for funsies. People who are kind, honest, loving, warm. Just like people leave, people enter, and stay. And I know those things too. And I’m currently working on integrating my mindsets so I can better appreciate what I have and also process loss without just going down the “everyone leaves” spiral. It is something that I am aware of and that I am working on. Being able to process big feelings while holding on to perspective is an art and one I have far from mastered. But I’m getting there. One step at a time.

But all that being said, as good as some things in my life are going right now, this year has certainly been a year of loss, heartbreak, grief, processing letting go, and learning healthier processing and coping mechanisms and how to love myself even a tenth as much as I love others. When I sat with my therapist last week, I recapped the Very Painful Thing that happened 6 months ago that I’m still hurting and healing from (I suspect this is a thing that I will have to live with for quite a while as I continue to learn and heal). I touched on the loss of my mother. I reminded her of my friend who had died back in the early spring, and my other very dear friend who passed 3 or 4 weeks ago, which was very sudden and shocking and brought up a lot of internal feelings that have their tendrils in about 100 other situations, which was interesting to observe. Then I told her about the death of my friend/former partner which was just a few days ago, at the time. And how sudden and shocking and all that was, and how there was this dark, cold chasm inside of me that I didn’t realize he used to fill, both as a friend and, once upon a time, a lover. I cried a little as I talked about how my health is deteriorating, how I’m having to close my businesses, how I will likely be on disability quite soon with very limited ability to work at all, much less pursue my passions as I am currently. How I have a restraining order against my father and have little-to-no contact with the rest of my family, which is by my own choice and for my good, but it doesn’t make it any less sad and challenging.

I sat on her couch in my hoodie and blue jeans, hair a mess and last night’s eyeliner still visible along the edges of my eyelashes, slumped over a little and avoiding eye contact as they welled with tears. The internal voice that has guided me for years, kept me alive, was screaming PULL IT TOGETHER, GARLAND! YOU’RE BETTER THAN THIS! But the “I’ve been in therapy for a hundred years” me managed to ignore that and let myself just feel that loss for a minute. All that grief and heartache and brokenness and emotional hunger. Feeling something akin to a small child, alone in a very cold and mean world, and with what little I have managed to scrape together for myself getting continually taken away. And while that is one story, though not the only or the entire story, far from the full picture of my life, my therapist reminded me that it is important to feel those feelings thoroughly, not to keep pushing them aside, judging them, boxing them up and putting them in storage to surprise me at some future time. So I did. And I am.

I took a week off social media to give myself some space. Now I am up in Portland Maine where I have run away to, to just literally get away from it all and breathe a little. Feel things a little. Process a little. Give myself some real space for a change. My therapist told me that if I didn’t deal with these feelings, all the antidepressants in the world wouldn’t keep my suicidal ideations from coming back. And she’s right. The progress I’ve made over this year is striking, and while I attribute a lot of it to my medication, it’s not just that. It's making good choices, setting good boundaries, doing the hard and painful work, and learning to love myself a little better.

There’s this line from a Lorde song that says “I light all the candles, got flowers for all my rooms. I care for myself the way I used to care about you.” And I try to keep that in the front of my mind as I deal with heartache. I love others so much, so deeply, but have such a hard time turning that back towards myself. But I’m trying to do a better job of that. And it’s not just self-care, though that is a part of it, of course. But also doing things like giving myself space to breathe and feel. Not engaging in things that hurt me. Talking to myself the way I would comfort or support a partner or loved one. Little things. I’m working on it. Another part of the whole thing, which I kind of touched on earlier but then got very distracted ( well, not distracted as much as focused on another area of this topic first), is finding the balance. As I had mentioned, I struggle with black and white thinking when it comes to emotions. People leave, break up, die, and my brain immediately switches over into this 100 percent “people leave you, that’s just what they do. That’s who you are. The worthless bitch that people leave” mode. And like, that’s not healthy. Feeling the pain and grief is, but just diving headfirst down a rabbit hole of abandonment issues is…not ideal. So I’m working heavily with my therapist on learning to have better dualistic thinking when it comes to big feels. Yeah, sometimes people leave. And yeah, I’ve lost a lot of people. And yes, there’s a lot in my history that supports my conspiracy theory, but also there are all these good and beautiful and loving and wonderful things and people in my life too, and while they don’t take away the sting of losing someone you love, perspective is important.

Another thing we had talked about was kintsugi (or kintsukuroi), which is the Japanese method of repairing broken ceramics with gold (technically a lacquer mixed with gold, silver, or platinum, but details, details), and how I can take situations that feel like they break me, chip me, crack me a little, and repair them with gold, metaphorically speaking. Taking something damaged and making it even more beautiful than before through the repair and healing process. And I’m not 100% sure what that will look like for me, but it is something I am meditating on. I really, earnestly want to be the best version of me that I can be. For my benefit, but also others. My loved ones deserve the best Farrah I can be, not the most depressed, imbalanced, suicidal Farrah I can be (they’ve already put up with so much of that so patiently. I LOVE YOU ALL!). I want to learn how to take the brutal punches life throws at me, patch it up with gold, and shine on. I deserve that. Those around me deserve that. And I’m working on it. It’s a hella long and slow process, but I think we're getting there.

Interestingly and coincidentally, if you believe in such things, my best friend (of whom I am fortunate to have a few) Colleen sent me this poem today, as she is prone to do because she is a magical human being. It’s by Fridtjof Nansen and reads “Love is life’s snow. It falls deepest and softest into the gashes left by the fight - whiter and purer than snow itself.” I feel like that’s kind of a literary version of kintsugi. Just because things get broken and gashed and torn up doesn’t mean all is lost and hopeless. In fact, while it in absolutely no way minimizes the pain of the process, it does give the opportunity to make things even more beautiful, even more pristine than before. That’s my goal. That’s what I’m trying for. And it hurts like a motherfucker. And I still cry a lot. And I still have panic attacks and flashbacks sometimes. But I’m learning, growing, and trying to leave everything a little bit better and kinder and more beautiful than I found it, myself included. I’m not doing a perfect job, probably pretty far from it, but I am trying. My heart hurts, but I am trying.