The castle of grief

This post originally appeared on medium.com/@kannarkk before I consolidated my writing here.

Grief is engulfing at times and is a distance memory many a time. And yet, the last three months of dealing with it have led me to believe it’s a dark engulfing power which your body and mind tries to naturally ride over. But there are a few times where it exploits your most vulnerable moments, and attacks you, enervates you and makes you falsely believe nothing has changed.

Just when you think the pain is gone away, it returns in a dream making you relive everything you experienced in full splendor. Oh, it’s beautifully dark and vivid. You wake up from the nightmarish recall you just had; it’s still 2 in the morning and the San Francisco night chill lingers around. Yet, you shudder more due to the dream lingering around in your thoughts — fresh and vivid. You break down silently.

You had a great day and you come home to happy thoughts and you find yourself breaking down. It was as though every happy thought constructed a bridge leading you to familiar gates of the castle of grief. And then, grief, waiting by the gates hugs you and leads you inside. You want to resist — I just had a happy day, please let me end it as such. But you also want to cry inconsolably — I want to get over this! The cloak that grief surrounds you with comforts you to open the floodgates as you sit in the perennial dark. And the room revolves as you try to make sense. Wasn’t grief supposed to be the evil Morgoth of your story? Why instead does he appear to be the fascinating Gandalf?

You don’t need a photo of him to remind you what you have lost; The sombre music grief is playing can be heard in the background even in the happiest moments. You don’t need a ping from your manager to wonder if you are okay — pretenses aside, you are not. Every Instagram story is a lie, a distraction, a painkiller to forget the time ticking away. And yet, every time you come back to the castle, you wonder only one thing — is this an ebb or am I going to sink to a deeper abyss? You desperately hope it’s at least the former, giving you space to breathe and to recuperate as you wait for the room to stop revolving and lead you to the stairs back to the bridge, where grief says, Au Revoir.

Grief is no longer a vague construct. Grief is your alter-ego, the one you fall back to when the world doesn’t make sense anymore, one who welcomes you despite the coldness and the deathlike pallor on his face. It strikes you that grief consumes your pain and knows the deepest, raw thoughts in you. Grief is everything you have overcome and every bit of pain you have endured. And yet, grief offers space like nobody else. Grief slows time and lets you experience every moment in its entirety. And then bids you goodbye, reminding you, you’ve got it in you!

— * — * — *—

What punishment of gods are not gifts. It’s a gift to exist and with existence comes suffering. There’s no escaping that — Stephen Colbert.

Two months ago, when I heard this for the first time in an intimate conversation (see tweet) between Anderson Cooper and Stephen Colbert, I barely understood it. Now it makes a bit more sense. It makes me be a lot gentle with myself in ways I couldn’t have earlier. It makes me more experienced, more mature and grateful for my life (for all of it).