"Learning to live again, whilst remembering"
How I did it: At first when I learnt about my loss, in the most horrible way (over a social networking site) I actually thought it was a sick joke. I was laughing as I rang up my best friends mum and asked to speak to her. When she told me, my friend had passed away in a accident I went numb and I just did not believe it.
I cried for ages, became depressed, hardly left the house. I did not know my friends family very well and I did not want to intrude and ask about the funeral. So months went on and I had no closure. I had not said goodbye, I remember texting her and telling her to have a lovely trip and she texted back.
I remember feeling so angry at myself for deleting the text off her. The hardest thing for me to do was to delete her number of my phone, because I would literally have a break down every time I saw her name, thinking she would never ever be coming up on my caller ID again. Little things would make me cry and break me down.
I still cannot talk about her without crying. She was amazing, she understood my strange humour and we had so much fun doing the most boring things. I regretted so much, not spending enough time with her, not getting to know her family better and not being good support for them because they were grieving too and had suffered a huge loss. Instead I cut off from the world and did nothing to reach out to them, even mine and her mutual friends did not understand the extent of my loss.
It was a sad and difficult time when we should have been enjoying our years, yet mine feel quite wasted now when I look back. I did go to counselling for a while, but it did not help and my councillor did not understand, to be honest neither did my family or friends. They actually got a bit sick of my grieving as it did go on for longer then it is 'supposed' to, so most of the time I would cry alone secretly.. I tried to banish all reminders of her but that really did not help, certain songs, things in my room and presents from her remind me.
I never wanted to forget her but I just wanted to feel better.
I recently had a dream about her and it was just me and her doing something mundane but she was there and I just felt at ease as we laughed together..
I realised a few days later that I was remembering her in the wrong way, she was always laughing and was fun, yet here I was crying and getting depressed. The sad thing is that crying is not going to bring her back and I am still working on remembering memories of her and not feeling too sad about it. I was so blessed to have known her and I now know that I have to learn from her.
She was always happy, she would always make me laugh and she made the most of life, I now know that I have to do the same, because I am still here living while she is not. I am lucky to be here and I have to live for her too. There is so much that she did not ever get to do and I have to do these things for her, I have to remember her and live my life and learn to be happy again. I have achieved very little since her death, but these were the years when I could have done so much. I cannot get them back but now is definitely the time to start doing everything that I need to do and want to do. Life is just too precious to waste, I need to take risks be more care free and remember her in a good way. I cannot live in the past any more, I need to do the things that I have wanted to do for a while and also do the things that she wanted to do.
I used to stay in bed or just block out her birthday but from now on, December 9th will be marked, I will do something fun that day every year no matter what happens. I need to do it for her, to keep her memory alive..
My issue is now that I find it really difficult to be friends with people or even have a relationship. I just cannot bare the though of telling someone everything and trusting them, the though of getting that close to someone scares me. I am sure that in time I will get better at this but I will not have a best friend again because no one could ever match up to her.
RIP Baby girl, I love you and will make you proud of me, one day we will see each other again and I am going to give you the biggest hug ever..xx
Lessons & tips: Talk to people, shutting yourself off does not help.. help others who are suffering with the same loss, help each other through the difficult time.
If you find talking hard, write down your thoughts.
Keep reminders of them and remind yourself that they were loaned to you from God and that they were not yours to keep, you were blessed to have had them in your life.
Remember their birthday.. and do something in there memory, something that is fun for you and something that represents them as a person.
Remember that you are still here and you need to live your life..
Resources: Writing my thoughts down often helped.
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Jul 10, 2011, 11:07AM PDT
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