Forgive me in advance. This might pain you to read because it’s most likely riddled with grammatical errors, I am still working on it.

I noticed I was sensitive to the world around me roughly around the age of 12. I spent almost the entire summer alone watching tv and rollerblading turning down phone calls from friends asking to hang out. I would swing in the backyard and look at the sky every time I went higher and higher, whistling the tune of the birds back to them while making up songs as I went along.

My bedroom faced easterly and from the window I could see the red light on the comm tower on top of the roof of the fire department.  I started singing about the red light and how it was protecting me and it was there for me, supporting me with its brightness at night. How I used to wish upon stars for a true love that made me float in the air. I liked my introvert tendencies, I was content. Then the world was ripped out from under my feet and everything I knew was no longer true. I had a mother and a father for a little over twelve years of my life, and then I didn’t. My mother’s death came on her sister’s birthday and a week before her other daughter’s  birthday. Grief was now my norm and also my norm to ignore it. I still felt things and I wanted to feel things but all of a sudden I was told “your mother wouldn’t want you to be sad.” While that may be 100% true, I decoded that message as I shouldn’t be sad, or feel sad. I still wanted to be held by her, to smell her coffee and cigarettes, for her to rub my back… heck, I’d even settle for her annoying snoring.

I was grieving and I was being lifted by everyone around me simultaneously.  When I walked the school halls I would believe that people were looking at me as the girl who’s mom was dead.  I gained some popularity from people’s pity or sympathy, classmates, friends, teachers, they all wanted to help, it was nice to feel that support. The guidance counselor called me into her office after I returned to school to check in and I told her I was fine, meanwhile I had just got done sobbing all over my dads shirt the night before. I am discovering slowly the grief process I went through as a 12 year old could have probably been handled a bit differently. Now, 32 years old, 2 years since losing my father and I have no problem when my heart aches for him or I cry or feel sad, leaves fall from trees and dance to the ground and I feel that, I always have. Tapping into nature and the world around me is what moves me, keeps me real, makes me love hard. I love the love that I have now because it’s so real and I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep this relationship I feel I was destined to be in, I do not take one second for granted and when I am not with him I long for him and I miss the energy we give each other.  I understand my grieving will continue as our relationship does and I do not have to mask it with “I’m fine.” I tell people I’m sad or things have been hard, maybe not all the time, but if I feel trusting to those family members or close friends, it’s freeing.

My love is the only person who knows how often I feel sadness.  I tell him when I find pennies on the ground because that makes me what I call sad/happy and also when I see someone who I think is my dad and get the wind knocked out of me as I cry walking my dog down the street. Grief does not leave. You just mask it with other emotions.

For once I am truly sitting with my grief and allowing myself to feel it whole. Not just cry alone at night, but cry at the grocery store, or at the gym, or while I walk my dog. I can be that “weirdo” you see crying. I don’t care… I’m not being dramatic, I am grieving the loss of my parents at 2 very different stages of my life at the very stage that I am at right now. And that is quite alright with me.