Grief

After experiencing the loss of a loved one, you go through many stages of grief and mourning that range from denial, always crying and anger with many in between. For me, the past two years, I have had two different reactions to grief and I thought that I would share it with you guys. This isn't something that I always like doing but I do it because I like to show you the raw emotion of Nicole. I also like to show to people that however irrational their behaviour may seem during tough times, it's not a bad thing to be feeling the way you are. There's nothing wrong with you with how you are feeling.

I don't think I've ever admitted this to anyone in my life, and so please, don't judge me or say mean things. I just want to share my life with you readers. I'm not trying to gain sympathy or attention, I just want to share my experience so other people don't feel so alone in how they feel.

1. Food control

My first ever loss was with my Nan 2 years ago. It was during the summer of my first and second year of Uni. I was not yet ready to go back to Uni but I knew I had to. With the fact every mark counted during this time, the amount of stress that was placed on me was unlike I had ever had before. I was three hours away from my family who I needed most and my parents were always finding it hard to cope with all the grief in the house. It meant that there was more going on than just grieving for my Nan. I vividly remember when I started limiting my food intake. It was during the second half of the first semester after I had gone home and didn't recognise any of my family. Our house is always filled with talking and laughter, but none of these was present. My house was an empty shell and I felt empty coming home and having to leave everyone again. I cried all the way back on the coach. It was after that that I never stopped crying myself to sleep at night.

For some reason, in my mind, I didn't have any control on my emotions or my life. I would hear of all my parents struggles, I got rubbish grades and I felt so alone that I didn't want to continue Uni. The only thing that spurred me on was my Nan's last words- "Cardiff girl." I would cry in my room alone and fake smile to everyone outside my room. I was slowly dying on the inside and no one knew. I couldn't tell my family because they worried about me enough and so the only real logic thing in my head that gave me some grounding was to slowly eat less and less. At the beginning, I would start eating less at meal times, in portions but then it felt so good to have some control over something that I stopped eating dinner all together, and then I would stop eating lunch. I would have a piece of toast and a few crackers for the entire day by the end of my first semester at Uni. 

Not only did it become about gaining control, but I also obsessed over my weight with constant weighing in the bathroom. It wasn't until one day when I was walking home from Uni, I literally didn't think I was going to make it home because I didn't have the energy. I told my friend and they asked me multiple times a day whether I had eaten. I knew that the first time I told them, I was weak and didn't really want to start eating again so I lied. I would make up all stories about what food I had eaten without actually eating it like "I went to the cafe with Steph after lectures." I got so bad that lying about food became second nature. Not once did I ever have a day where I ate nothing but for me, I definitely ate around 70-80% less than I had before. I had put on a stone in first year, but I had manage to lose almost a stone from my healthy weight in a matter of weeks. I only started to eat properly again when I broke down a week before we broke up from Christmas and cried on the phone to my sister on the middle of the street. I finally cracked and let everything out. I got on the first coach home that day and then being surrounded by my family, I ate more and more and my problem of connecting my grief to not eating finally subsided.

I'm not saying that I had an eating disorder at that time, but I definitely know that I had the ability to develop one if I had carried on in that mindset. I chose not to eat because it made me feel better if just for a little while. 

I do NOT advocate this way of dealing AT ALL and think it is extremely dangerous. If anything, I want to help people to see that it won't help you feel better- you need to talk to people, not just bottle it up. 

2. Withdrawal

They say the second loss is easier than the first and although this may be slightly true, it's not for the reasons that people think. My second loss was recently in this year with my Grandad, and it felt like an easier loss because I was surrounded by my family and almost finished with Uni. It wasn't easy in the slightest and I definitely found myself going back to my old ways of skipping meals and eating the bare minimum, although this time I made a marked decision to not go down that road so severely. It also helped that my Mum checked in on what I was eating a lot more than before because she knew of my problems previously. I decided it wasn't worth lying about however hard it was sometimes to tell the truth. Although, I found another way to deal with my grief obviously in conjunction with crying. I withdrew from a lot of people. I wouldn't text people or talk to them unless I absolutely had to. I never initiated conversation nor did I try very hard to keep it going and that proved to be hard to some of the people around me.

I didn't feel a need to talk about meaningless things, instead I just lived in my own head with my grief and the stress of passing exams. I started to resent people who had an easy conversation and came to me laughing and joking because I couldn't do that. I hated talking to one of my best friend's because it seemed like her life was all mapped out happily and she didn't give two hoots about how I was feeling. One of my biggest saviours for when I was at Uni was my housemate who never failed to make me feel better. The conversations we had were meaningless and about nothing at all. He would give me random facts/songs that just made me smile, i.e. blasting out the goat editions of songs on Youtube at all hours of the day. He didn't expect me to talk to him about anything in particular nor did he come to me when he needed some cheering up knowing that I couldn't handle it. He was the one that made me feel connected with the world until I got back home to my family.

Withdrawal is easy because you feel like you are doing everyone a favour by not bothering them with your troubles but it only makes you more lonely than you already feel. It makes you feel even sadder and in the end, you grieve for friendships that you lose as well as the person you have lost to grief.

Not once would I tell anyone how to feel or how to deal with grief because there are so many different ways, but I know from my experience that the ways I chose to deal with things wasn't the smartest. I made myself feel isolated and woven in secrecy by my lies. The ultimate way to grieve is to be completely honest with how you feel and to talk about things. But, grief is not wanted and so the ways you react are not going to be desirable.

You're never alone in your grief, you just need to find that person that makes it okay to grieve honestly and makes you feel better after. Grief is not a bad thing, it's a natural and healthy thing but grieving in an unhealthy way will make the situation 10 times worse.

I love you all.

If any of you are going through a time of grief or sadness, please, if you need someone to talk to; you can always talk to me! I want to help and so never hesitate to leave me a comment

xxx