Grief, in liquid form.

People say love is the most difficult emotion. Some people say sadness.

I CALL DIBS AND PIN IT ON GRIEF.

I think I’ve spent a good amount of time trying to train my brain out of thinking bad things. Not because I suddenly became this extremely evolved, positive person, but because I know myself. I know how one thought can become ten thoughts, and then suddenly I’ve built an entire alternate reality in my head and am emotionally living there. So I catch myself. I do my gratefulness mantra. I remind myself of everything that is good, everything that is here, everything that I have. And most days, my mind understands.

But then there are days when my body doesn't.

One tiny pocket of grief opens somewhere inside me, makes its way to my eyes, and leaks out as tears. And sometimes from elsewhere too, ahem. My hands start trembling, my chest feels strange, and suddenly hope itself is coming out in liquid form, leaving me confused about the gap between my mind having done the work and my body not having received the memo.

It's strange to realise you can be grateful and grieving at the same time. You can know you're okay and still not feel okay. You can have an entire philosophy built around acceptance and still have a random Tuesday when your body says, "Actually, we're going to revisit everything you've ever felt." Thanks.

And maybe that's where grief gets interesting, because it isn't only about losing someone. I think grief is about everything you thought your life was going to be, and then wasn't. It is losing people, obviously, but it is also losing versions of yourself. Losing a version of your future. Losing the person you thought you would become. Losing the innocence you had before something happened to you.

And the annoying part is, just when you think you've dealt with something, something else opens.

My brain is basically a badly managed filing cabinet, like the one in Inside Out. Drawers inside drawers, files inside folders, little holders containing things I thought I'd dealt with years ago. And then one tiny thing happens, and every drawer opens at once. Baaad aajati hai bro, bijli kadakti hai, baarish hoti hai, duniya hilti hai. Every trauma, every heartbreak, every disappointment, every version of myself I had to become just to survive, something comes out and stands in front of me asking to be caressed.

And I'm like, excuse me? Who authorised this meeting?

But maybe that's the thing about healing. You don't necessarily get rid of the drawers. You just become less afraid of opening them.

I've realised how easy it is to intellectualise pain when it isn't yours. You can have the best philosophy in the world and believe every word of it. You can tell someone that decisions are portals. That you don't climb mountains so people can see you; you climb them so you can see the world. That if it's your calling, it will keep calling. That you already know what you need to do, you're just negotiating with comfort.

And you can mean every single word.

Until you're the one standing at the portal, looking at the mountain, ignoring the phone call, negotiating with comfort like a lawyer. Then suddenly, philosophy feels very different.

I think about how we are constantly trying to turn everything into a lesson. Maybe sometimes I don't want the lesson. Maybe sometimes something just hurts. Maybe I don't need to immediately understand why it happened. Maybe I can just say, this was awful, this changed me, and I am still figuring out what to do with that.

I also think strength has been sold to us very badly. BUT LATER.

Read this somewhere: sometimes you need someone else to hold the lamp. So true. I will never forget the people who came with a lamp when I was in the dark. Not to fix me. Not to tell me how to get out. Not to make my darkness uncomfortable for them. They just sat with me until I could see again.

Find people who can sit in the dark with you. Find people who don't need you to be impressive, productive, grateful, healed, or entertaining every second of the day. Find people who can hold space for your worst days without making you feel like you're an inconvenience.

And then, somehow, become that person for someone else.

I know that gratitude and grief can exist in the same body. That being grateful doesn't cancel out being sad. That being happy doesn't mean you aren't carrying something. That healing doesn't mean the drawers never open again.

Sometimes they will.

Sometimes everything will spill out.

Sometimes your body will cry before your mind understands why.

So go live a little. Love a little. Be wrong a little. Change your mind. Change your plans. Let a few drawers open. Have a good cry. Eat something nice afterwards. Call someone who makes you laugh until you forget what you were crying about in the first place.

And remember, you don't have to have life figured out to participate in it. You just have to be here for it. (Suicide story circa 2023.)

The rest? We'll figure it out. Or we won't, kyuki kisi ne kya khoob kaha tha, par maine suna nahi so, might as well make our own mistakes interesting.

Until my next breakdown - oh wait, rant, I mean.

XOXO, Aarya