Joe had passed away early January.
I had expected to feel a sense of sadness or grief. Is it wrong, that in some twisted way, I almost felt relieved?
I did love Joe, he was family, but I finally didn't have his hot breath breathing down my neck about who I was.
He died of a short-term illness, but I never saw him before he died, I didn't get to say goodbye. Even if I hated the man, he was my grandfather, and I always seemed to want some kind of closure, some acceptance.
The closure I never received.
Was he disappointed in me?
My family were distraught, breaking into tears at any given time. My mother, father and brother grieved very deeply. You could see how devastated they felt, and how much the death took a toll on them.
I didn't feel anything.
Nothing at all.
I hated myself that I couldn't even mourn a loss correctly. I shed no tears, felt no remorse, and kept my head above water while everyone else were sinking. The relationship Joe and I shared was very complicated, we just didn't click, we just weren't close. We rarely talked and we had completely different views.
Is it normal that we just didn't understand each other?
His funeral was like any other funeral, the ocean of black, the sad speeches, the red, blotched faces. Everyone mourned the same, everyone felt the same.
Everyone.
Why didn’t I fit in?
After his funeral I maybe expected the world to stop spinning, for events to stop and for people to mourn. For my family, that did happen, birthdays were disrupted, and feelings confused. In the midst of everything, for me, life just seemed to carry on. The memory of my grandfather never plagued my thoughts and the pain never arrived. The guilt, for not feeling anything, always returned, it made me realise how much of a monster I was, a psychopath, inhuman.
I knew I could feel some sort of pain, after enduring a loss several months prior, maybe it was Joe's actions that skewed my course of grief, or maybe I had had enough, maybe I had given up?
"What did I do to deserve this life?" My thoughts were plagued by deep, shrouded guilt.
"What did I do in order to suffer this much?"
"Alycia, what do I do?"
"Help me".
"Why did you leave me, please!"
I liked to think that she was always looking over me, out for me. I liked to believe that she was proud of me and that she held me through my stormy nights. I liked to think she still loved me, from beyond the grave.
I had held so much unresolved pain from her death, I never truly gave myself time to get over her. I didn't want to, I kept her alive in my head so I could survive, so I could keep myself from falling under.
"Alycia"
"Alycia"
"Alycia"
At what point did I stop living?
And just started surviving?
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