Lost and Found
A few days after my 30th birthday, I sat alone in my empty California apartment as the reality of my loss sunk in. Tried as I might have, I wasn’t ready to grieve yet. Filled with hatred, hurt, and guilt, I was still trying to resurrect this death by joining the broken parts as if taping the torn pieces of a valuable letter or a photograph. It was beyond me then to fathom the hurt a death could bring. I have endured the loss of my grandparents but always thought of it more as a release: freedom from suffering and ailments. This one was different. It was abstract. A death indeed, of a relationship. And a piece of myself. What happens when relationships die, dismantle like a house of cards? It either leaves us liberated or bruised for a lifetime. Mine was the latter. I didn’t know then that these were the wounds I’d nurse for a long time and the scars of which shall not fade with their impermanence. The hurt that a breaking, dissolving friendship brings is piercing and cuts deep like a shard of glass in the skin. Chances are, the wound might leave you festered. It left me embittered: towards my friend, myself, relationships, and people in general. As I recall these sore thoughts while I write, I am bound to accept that when I broke up with my boyfriend, what I grieved the most was our friendship more than the relationship we formed later in our youth. In both these bereavements, I found myself on the outside of the scenario that felt like friendship. I had erred as a human, and as I carried my wounds as an exhibit of trust, I am full of remorse to feel they must have too. The demise of a relationship unfetters us from something we do not foresee at the time of occurrence.
But this one death of a dear friendship had pushed me in a storm. And as Murakami says: When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. The wonderment of a change was far-fetched right now, as I tried to chant to calm myself down for the sake of my unborn baby, but a stream of tears managed to find an outlet yet again. I was battling my sentiments as a petrified new mother-to-be, a friend, and an anxious person who had just moved to a new country. But the mind has a peculiar way of spiraling down the dark hole: a trickster that brings aching pangs of agony and pain. It reminds you of what you are going through. And the irony of it all is the more you push them away, the more they try to pave their way inwards, like an uninvited guest. Also, much like a spell, the idea of what transpired keeps buzzing in the head. I found myself at the cusp of bad mental health. It was the first time I understood what anxiety meant and how catastrophic it can be. I was privileged to have a durable support system to lean on. I crawled back towards books for comfort. I was determined to buoy in this squall of emotions, but my demons would still creep up in my solitude. I knew I needed to mourn for my pain to pass away. But mourning meant I had to let go, stop fighting, and stop saving the remnants of this friendship. Was I ready to let go of this bond that we had nurtured all these years and which now felt like bondage to me?
When I finally entered the mourning period, I navigated through my past and the relationships I had let go of, the ones built on love and trust. That came undone when the quotient of both fell short. Grief comes from a place of love. There is no grief without love. As I lamented the death of this friendship, my only keepsake was a happier time we had spent together. It felt like the passing of eternity to bring me to terms with what I lost and what I possessed. This storm had indeed changed me. It saw a part of me die but gave birth to life lessons. I also like to call it the episode of growing up. The sense of loss was existent as it had left a void. I never tried to fill it up, just cast a lid on it and pretended forgotten. But seldom do we forget a death so dear. It lay empty beneath the roof of life that kept passing by. Max Porter says- Grief is a thing with feathers. I just waited for mine to lift and leave me cathartic peace.
A death that I perceived as an end came back to me taking small flights. Like a phoenix, it rose from the ashes. Perhaps this is then the difference between abstract and physical losses: hope. To err might be human, but letting go and embracing anew is humanness. The journey of this friendship will be different but far better now, as it has seen two people contemplate the same loss- of a dear friendship.
