grief's silent struggle

do your feelings ever just hit you all at once? i suppose when you’re constantly surrounded by people, you suppress your feelings. not out of fear of being vulnerable or authentic, but because sometimes it’s not functional to be constantly so emotional.

that’s how it’s felt this past month. we lost someone close to us earlier in the month and naturally with loss comes grief. but grief is a bit fucked up. it’s never linear in its process. and 99% of the time we just continue with our lives as though nothing has really changed. and externally, it hasn’t. but internally there’s a loss there that only few of us are feeling. it’s like a silent battle. and the times where it hits us the most might be times where it’s not really appropriate to break down. maybe you’re serving a customer. maybe you’re mid-session coaching a team of men or junior girls. maybe you’re just going for a walk in public. regardless of the occasion, we often suppress these moments until a suitable time when we’re alone. and then it comes out like a tsunami of emotion.

i suppose that’s where i am now. sitting alone in my car, feeling all the things i’ve tried tried to ignore. things often too hard to articulate. or too hard for others to support. so instead of sharing, you keep to yourself. conscious of being a burden or a black cloud to others in your life. there’s only so long that people want to hear the same story, instead we often tell a narrative that ignores the heaviness or the pain out of consideration for others. but all that does is a disservice to ourselves. because that pain remains.

the thing with losing someone is that it makes you think about all the people, and pets (if you have them), who are still near and dear. it makes you imagine a life without them. for those of you who have read other blog posts of mine, you’ll remember how petrified of death i am. how incomprehensible i find it. so to be forced to confront the reality of a life without those dearest to me is a heaviness i often silently carry on a daily basis. it’s not really a dinner conversation now is it?

what’s been compounding these feelings is also the fact that i’m constantly in pain. six and a half months post surgery and i still can’t run, train, or exercise to any capacity that’s fulfilling. i’ve experienced long term injuries before - acls force you to do that, but this has been different. i haven’t had the progression. all i’ve had is pain. i wake up each morning still unable to bend my knee without pain. i try to demonstrate drills in my academies only to be acutely reminded of the pain in my knee.

sometimes i think i’m just weak and i need to toughen up. if i ignore it, it’ll disappear, right? but that doesn’t work with our feelings so in what world would that work for pain?

for the first few months, i could accept the pain. i had had surgery and the arthritis was really bad. my body needed time to heal. no worries. this also aided in me accepting my retirement and transitioning into coaching - i had made the right decision. but we’re now nearly seven months on and i’m still in agony. i still can’t coach freely. i still can’t get any form of endorphin release. i’ve lost my primary identity - as a footballer, and i’ve substituted it for another one - a football coach. but what i haven’t been able to substitute is the chemicals associated with playing. the endorphins. the oxytocin. the serotonin. instead these happy, good-feeling chemicals, have been substituted for pain. and to be honest, i’m getting a bit over it.

the problem with chronic pain though is no one else can experience it. no one is fighting the daily battle with you. you’re alone. much like your experience of grief. and i suppose that’s where i find myself with these feelings. externally, everything is peachy. but internally there’s a heaviness i’ve been carrying in which i’m not sure how to alleviate. i suppose writing about it is my attempt at offloading some of that.

here's what i wrote shortly after our friend passed away:

grief is a bit fucked up. it hits you immediately but then it wavers. surging at random times without warning. the tragic thing about death is that life goes on. it goes on even though it feels like the world should stop. stop to mourn the passing of someone so important to you. but that’s the thing; death doesn’t affect everyone equally. it affects those nearest and dearest the most. and even then, the pain isn’t equally shared. for most, the passing of someone will just mean they won’t see them once a month anymore, for others, they’ve lost their ‘person’. their outlet. their rock.

how is someone so alive one minute, and then gone the next. i find death incomprehensible. it doesn’t ever feel real. it always feels like you’ll see that person again. but i think that’s because the pain of accepting a reality in which they’re not a part of is too hard to bear.

even when you know it’s coming, you trick yourself into thinking there’s more time. there’ll be more memories. even as the person deteriorates in front of you, we don’t want to accept reality. we don’t want to prepare for the inevitable. it’s a lot less painful to ignore. it’s a lot more challenging to confront. but we always regret the words left unsaid, rarely the words we shared. i suppose that is why i feel so passionately about hand written notes. of expressing gratitude to those, here and now, while they can still hear your words.

we lost someone dear to us this week. someone who only entered our lives in the past year but who made a lifelong impact. Jude’s zest for life was contagious. her passion for football shared. and her knack for storytelling endearing. what a beautiful, loving, and warm person she was. we feel so grateful for the memories we did have, for the time we spent together, for seeing in this new year with her. it still feels so unreal that she is no longer with us. Jude wasn’t just a champion for the teams she supported, she was a champion for the people she supported too. we will miss you and the life you brought to our lives. losing you feels like losing a family member - because that’s what you’ve always felt like for us. i only wish, as i’m sure we all do, that we had more time with you.

i’m not sure what to make of an after life, but i really do hope we get to meet again. in the meantime, i hope you get to meet my Opa and your football brains can keep each other company. until next time x

*this really isn’t meant as a ‘woe is me, life is so hard’ post because life really isn’t bad. i know that. these are just human experiences i know others have experienced, and are experiencing, but perhaps also don’t articulate. grief and pain aren’t permanent. but they do feel pretty shit at the time.