My Best Friend Died

I need to lash out.
I need to be vocal and share.
I need someone to bear witness to my grief.
I also want to keep it contained. Seething and bubbling under the surface, where it is so raw and no one can see.

I’m angry and it hurts -don’t touch me.

But I’m fractured and need someone to hold me tightly to stop all my broken pieces exploding apart.

When someone dies and it’s so sudden and so shocking, it is so hard to comprehend how the world keeps on turning. When you have had all the air sucked out of your lungs and replaced by gravel and yet the birds still sing in the morning and people still laugh. They laugh!
And you have to find a way to slot back in to every day life as if your whole world hasn’t just been shifted on it’s axis. You feel like you’re walking to a slightly different rhythm to the rest of the world. Your heart is missing a beat and no one else is aware.
This cataclysmic event has left a fault line in my heart.
An irreparable break.


I used to liken grief to a back pack.

At first, it feels like one of those huge SAS-style burdens that threatens to crush you under the weight of it. You have to carry it with you all day , every day and you are constantly aware of it. It’s relentless. It hurts, it’s heavy and you cannot get a moments peace from it.
Over time, the burden becomes a backpack. Over the course of several years it will gradually become like a small clutch bag. You are never quite free of it, it just becomes part of your every day. You carry it with you and eventually, you don’t notice it so much. It’s just part of ‘you’.

Just now, I cannot think that far in to the future. I am right in the midst of the turmoil and trauma and trying to get by day by day, hour by hour.

‘The Trick Is To Keep Breathing’