Brain Freeze

I haven’t been able to write about my feelings in a long time.  

Grief has a way of reaching into my life and pressing pause without warning. One day, I’m moving through the world with my normal rhythm, and the next, everything inside me goes quiet. Not a peaceful quiet.  Complete silence. Lights out. Dark. Lonely. Thoughts that were once steady and familiar suddenly freeze in place.  

People talk about grief as an emotion, but rarely talk about what it does to the mind.  It interrupts the ability to think.  It steals focus and makes the simplest tasks feel like drowning in an unstoppable rip current.

When grief hits, my brain has a way of shutting down. It’s not instant, but it comes. I forget things I’ve always remembered. I feel guilty. I lose my train of thought mid-sentence. I stare at a screen or a wall, knowing I was about to do something, but the thought slips away just as quickly as they did.  I have emotional outbursts for no reason.  

There’s a fog that comes with grief.  It’s thick, heavy, and disorienting. Days blur. Conversations fade. I reread the same messages over and over.   Especially the text messages.  Oh God, the text messages.  I walk into a room and forget why I’m there. I feel suspended between moments, unable to be fully present at any given time.

Perhaps the hardest part is the guilt.  The belief that I should be functioning better, faster, and stronger. The guilt that floods in when I laugh.  The guilt I feel when doing something fun that they too would have loved.  But grief doesn’t respond to pressure. It doesn’t speed up, and it doesn’t loosen its grip.  

It may take me longer, but I will baby step through this process until I can write and remember freely again.  

If you’re reading this and have similar experiences with grief, please share.  You deserve the peace.  And the best part is, you just may help another suicide loss griever.