On grieving the living

Life challenges seem to be thrown at me in patterns. Themes. Waves. Whatever it is shows up and then it's EVERYWHERE. It's in my clinical work and something I'm reading and in my personal experiences. It is exposure. It is immersion. It's entirely possible that the pattern only exists because of me. The technical term for this is priming effect-- you see a thing and your subconsicous is then ready to notice it again. And yet. I think it's equally probable that something bigger than myself is trying to show me something, repeatedly, so that I learn and grow. My recent thing is grief, but not necessarily death grief. I'm talking the grief you feel when you lose a person who is still alive. It's been everywhere, all around me, every day this week and last and maybe even longer. Many days I've turned my wet eyes up toward the sky and said, "okay, I hear you. I HEAR YOU. What am I supposed to be learning?" Here are my takeaways so far: *Grief is inevitable as I age, as me and those around me grow and change. In this way, pain is an artifact of time. It's okay to hurt. I'm not alone in this experience.

* I can miss a person SO SO much and want more than anything to get back to a way we used to be together. And sometimes that's not possible. Sometimes a person is so different that I may never get to interact again with who they used to be. It's a gutpunch but that doesn't make it less true. I can grieve for the past while moving toward acceptance of my present.

* Conversely, people in my life may miss previous versions of me, old Allisons who will never again return. They might have preferred the me I was at 15 or 20 or 25 or 30 or 35. But I can't build a life around being who others want me to be. I can't be everyone's type. I can grieve those who choose to distance from me without shaming myself for changing.

* I can't save people. It's not my job to "bring them back to who they really are," because that may not be a thing, and even if it were, I'm not that powerful or important. I will grieve those who change in a way that I believe to be destructive without taking responsibility for their wellbeing. Is there probably more here for me to learn? Yeah. That's what life is, I suppose-- an extended opportunity to learn hurt and pivot, learn hurt and pivot, rinse and repeat. So if you're grieving the living-- you're not alone. This is human. And I see you.