It’s time for me to talk about grief.
And I wanted to talk about grief because I feel like everyone in my life, including myself, is currently grieving to some extent. There’s the collective grief that we’ve all felt since the beginning of the pandemic; a lot of it is lost time and memories, missing birthdays and holidays because it wasn’t safe to see one another. There were people dear to us that we lost during the pandemic, and we couldn’t even grieve how we wanted to because of the circumstances. I feel like I need to acknowledge this grief because the pandemic did a lot of damage to people’s mental states, more than we liked to admit. It's weird to me that we all lived this moment in history and now it’s over. I just don’t know where to place these feelings and for many, it never was really over. If you’re immunocompromised you probably know this better than anyone else. Nobody social distances anymore — remember that? I miss people giving me my personal space… I also can’t help but think about people who’ve suffered from the side effects of long covid and are still dealing with ongoing health issues. They’ve been robbed of a lot and are probably grieving in their own way, for what the sickness has taken away from them, and learning to now live in a less-than-able body.
Now, this isn’t an essay to revisit the pandemic but rather an example of grief that a lot of us are feeling. It’s been hard for me lately to realize that I’ve been grieving for things that I didn’t realize I could feel grief over. Moving surprisingly caused me a lot of grief that I wasn’t prepared for. Although it’s great to start over and be in a new place, I didn’t realize how long it would take me to adjust. Things were so unfamiliar to me and it was overwhelming, but I didn’t want to admit it. I was grieving my old routine, which I was so used to and thought was mundane. I was grieving my old social life and being able to see people at the drop of a hat. I was grieving the fact that I barely heard from friends, and was constantly seeing pictures and videos of get-togethers and parties that I was no longer a part of. I was sad that I was missing out but blamed myself because it was my decision to leave NY, and I would eventually have new memories to replace the old ones. I was also grieving for my childhood home. Being a New Yorker (especially from The Bronx) is a huge part of who I am, and makes me extremely proud, and it’s a big focus of my artistic work. But about a year after I moved, my parents decided to do the same and left The Bronx to live in the Southwest. As awesome as this was, due to the pandemic, it wasn’t safe to fly and see them before they moved. I didn’t get my “last goodbye” or whatever I thought I needed, and that has followed me around since. The place where I spent my entire life was now gone in a split second, and all I had left were pictures, videos, stories - simply memories. I underestimated how important closure would have been for me.
A big part of the way grief functions in my life is that I’m a very nostalgic person, but only now am I realizing that I often get stuck in the past. I think about how great things were, and how happy I used to be, and it’s hard for me to move on. I’m also afraid that things will never get back to how they were in that brief period of time. Even when I’m trying to live in the present, I can’t stop fixating on how what I’m experiencing will be over soon and that’s it. The crazy thing is that in those moments that I romanticize, things never really were picture perfect. My longing for the past has stopped me from being able to live in the present, and appreciate things how they are. It’s so deeply ingrained in my spirit that I actually wrote my thesis about nostalgia and my constant longing. I titled it Ni Aquí Ni Allá, which translates to Neither Here Nor There, a common phrase used within the Latinx community to often describe the displacement and longing we feel as a part of the diaspora.
When I was working on my project, I did a lot of research on nostalgia, and thankfully I’m not the only one who’s been swept away by the concept. I was really struck by this essay called Archive, Affect, and the Every Day, by Gayatri Gopinath, where she discusses the archive (another nostalgic obsession of mine) in conjunction with colonialism. At the beginning of the essay, Gopinath starts by referencing the memoir, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route (2007) by Saidiya Hartman. In the memoir, Hartman discusses what it’s like to be a descendant of ancestors that were part of the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade, specifically, ones in which she was not able to track their pasts. After returning to Ghana, she describes the distance and alienation she feels between herself and others around her. Hartman realizes that although her ancestors were from Ghana, she felt no connection to this land and rather, felt like an outsider. Hartman even visited what was once slaves’ quarters, looking for some connection in what was left behind. She wrote, “‘In the dungeon, there were remains but no stories that could resurrect the dead except the stories I invented (Hartman, 2007, p. 116).’” (Gopinath 170)
And this is when I realized that is exactly what I’ve been doing. I’ve been grieving so deeply for memories of the past and the passage of time, that I slowly began to invent histories and narratives for people I didn’t even know. It’s only now as I write this essay that I realize how this has kept me detached from living in the present. How is it that I’ve let life pass me by, only thinking about things that I can’t change? Isn’t the point of the past to learn from it and move on? I’m annoyed with myself that I’ve let myself be stuck for so long. Only recently I realized that my obsession with nostalgia, the past, and this never-ending cycle of grief has stopped me from making long term goals and plans for myself, because I’m not even considering what my future would look like.
But grief robs us of a lot. It’s a like a thief that doesn’t care to steal whether you’re looking or not. Grief doesn’t care if you’re sad already, anxious, or just had the worst day of your life. It won’t wait around until you're ready to handle it, it just shows up when it feels like it. Grief is so incredibly draining. In December, when my Grandma passed, I wrote about how I often feel grief in my stomach; it’s like a sadness that makes me feel like puking. I also said how terrified I was to even grieve, because every time I did, it felt like grieving for every single loss I ever had all over again. But I also wrote about how much I loved my Grandma, my fondest memories of her, and all of her favorite things. Reflecting on these things didn’t make me any less sad, but less afraid to be sad.
When I love, I love incredibly hard. I’m very sensitive and sentimental, so when I grieve, I grieve hard. It’s just a part of me that I have to accept and understand that I need to make the space I need to feel that really big sadness and work through each and every one of those feelings. And shit — I just remembered I still exist! I’ve been grieving for so long that I forgot I was here. So maybe as we grieve, we need to remind ourselves that we are still alive. Grief can be so all-consuming that we forget we still have our own lives ahead of us. All of this is easier said than done, but I tell myself theses things in hopes something will stick and I can begin to move on. We’re human after all, complex, confused, and a little scared of what life might bring. And reminding myself that everyone feels this way makes me feel less alone.
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