Luci.News

This is a piece dedicated to my dad. A piece so intimate and so personal that I wasn’t even entirely sure if I wanted it out in the world. Yet here I am expressing myself the only way I know how, in hopes that it helps someone else feel less alone in their journey with grief.  

This piece won’t make sense – it’s not meant to. 

I lost my dad 134 days ago. A huge part of me died that day too. My life has completely changed and I don’t recognise the person that I am anymore. Every day that passes fills me with so much sadness that it’s consuming me. I’m constantly angry and I feel guilt for small moments of happiness when he’s not here. No one really talks about losing your dad at such a young age because it’s not meant to happen, not now anyways. You walk around with a piece of you missing and look for him in every man you meet. It doesn’t get better with time. You just get so used to the feeling that it becomes your new normal. 

There’s this certain clinical satisfaction in seeing just how bad things can get. A satisfaction I desire so so badly. Yet the other day someone told me it will get better. But what if I don’t want it to ? What if this overwhelming pain is the only proof that he ever lived ? My grief is my voucher: I experienced his love and now the love I only ever intended to return to him has nowhere to go besides the pounding space in my chest.

And still, a vital part of grieving is forgetting. I remember that he was once here but time has taken away the details of his entire existence. I know that I’ve felt his hand at least once in my life but my brain is incapable of remembering the roughness of his palm. I forget the vibrations of his voice and the sound of his laugh. Time does not heal. Time only lets me keep the knowledge that he was ever real but nothing more than that. 

I have to constantly remind myself that I don’t have to fix everything. I don’t have to solve everything. I can still find peace and grow even when everything’s changing. Even when I feel ridden with guilt for being happy. It’s okay to be happy. It’s okay to “move on”. 

Having to leave university in the middle of the night is something I will never forget. Having to see a cold and lifeless body that was once filled with ambition and love will never leave my sight. I didn’t get to say goodbye. I didn’t get closure. I didn’t ever really get the chance to grieve before being thrown into the funeral plannings and all the “afters”.

It’s unfair for people to expect me to be the same. Because I’m not and I’m not sure I ever will be “me” again. I’ve changed. For better or for worse I’m not sure. I’m just a shell of the person I once was filled with unimaginable guilt and the need to be strong. The need to return to cosmic mud and begin to grow again, to blossom in a new way. A new me.

I refuse to let this consume my being. I refuse to not be happy. To not love. To not live. Why ? Because of anger. Because of fear. Because 2 am is awfully heavy to handle alone. Because constantly running is exhausting. Because I need hope. Because I believe in something greater than my own selfish need to be mad at the world. Because of the friendships I’m yet to find and the children I’m yet to have. Because I deserve it. Because HE’D want me to be happy.

Like him, I was born. Like him, I was raised in the institution of dreaming and ambition. Hand on my heart. Hand on my stupid stupid heart. Because unlike him I’m still living. And unlike him my dreaming is reserved for nights and his is now eternity. 

The love that I harbour for him now wears a long raincoat and goes by the name of grief and the cost of keeping its company is losing myself and the memory of him to it. 

I just hope wherever he is now treats him kinder than earth ever did. I hope he’s at peace because I for sure am not. And I hate him for it. I hate him for leaving me. I hate him for not being around to see me grow. I hate him.

But I will be a good person. I will live a good life. And I will do it for him. I’ll make him proud because 18 years wasn’t enough …