Grief
Grief is such an interesting concept. My dog passed away five months ago and I haven’t been the same person since, in many ways. For starters, I don’t think I have ever been as sick, in frequency and intensity, as I’ve been in these last months. For further proof, I had never had migraines before, and I had my first crisis ever one week after he left us. If that’s not revelatory, I don’t know what is. The first time I had such an invalidating headache, I didn’t know what it was. I thought it was due to too much screen time, too little sleep, or just finally my body letting go of all the stress it had been accumulating during the months Forrest had been sick. Since that first crisis, I’ve had migraines almost every week up to this day, not with the intensity of that first one – which took me to the emergency room – but surely with a steady, omnipresent pain behind my forehead. A couple of weeks ago, I had the strongest crisis I’ve ever had, even worse than the one back in May. The pain was so intense I can’t even explain it, you probably understand if you’ve ever experienced a migraine, and this time it came accompanied by nausea and vomit – a cherry on top I would very much have preferred not to acquaint myself with.
Evidently, I’ve been paying visits to the neurologist since my life took a turn in this direction. Given the frequency and intensity of my crisis, the doctor told me that the best treatment he could offer was a preemptive one, which consists in taking a pill everyday. There are different options, but within them, the preemptive treatment can be based on antidepressants or beta-blockers. These have been proven to effectively reduce both the frequency and the intensity of the crisis in patients that have migraines several times per month. I’m 27 years old, so the prospect of having to take a pill everyday for the rest of my life does not sound attractive to me in the least. Thus, I decided to look for alternatives. I spoke to my friend Em about this. Em knows what I’m talking about first hand because she’s had the joy of experiencing infernal migraines as well. She recommended that I give Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) a go. TCM’s approach to illness is different from the one in Western Medicine. I’m far from being an expert, so take the following with a pinch of salt, but in TCM, illness is considered a consequence of an imbalance between mind, body and spirit. I booked an appointment with a TCM doctor that Em recommended. The doctor explained to me that because I felt my migraines in my forehead, as an invasive, heavy pain (some people feel them only on one side of the head, on both sides, as an acute pain, etc), the root of the issue was actually in my stomach – the forehead in TCM is related to the stomach. This came to me as no surprise, since I’ve had digestive problems for most of my adult life: foods that completely mess up my stomach, days – that easily turn into weeks – in which I wake up completely bloated for no apparent reason, and a general fear and sense of discomfort around that area. However, truthfully, since Forrest left these symptoms have been intensified. When I explained to the doctor that my dog had passed away in May, she told me that clearly, I hadn’t yet been able to digest this loss, and this had been blocking my system all this time. To be honest, nothing has ever made that much sense to me in my life. She also told me, in an eloquent, unpreoccupied tone “I see that, in general, you have trouble digesting the world, you have a great hypersensibility”. Again, the hypersensibility part was not breaking news for me, but the bit about not digesting the world, that really hit home – I had never encountered a more accurate way to describe myself. Absolutely, I have trouble digesting the world. I have never understood it, I swallow it down because I seem to have to, but I don’t move much past that. The fact that Forrest died rather suddenly, put such a ginormous weight into my already overloaded system. I’ve been ruminating on my feelings my whole life, I wasn’t taught how to express them safely or how to manage them (as opposed to them managing me), and the last couple of years haven’t exactly been easy emotionally, so when this very big feeling came, my body was already pulling from reserves. It was too big for my stomach to digest alone, it went all the way up to my head.
When I think about my dog, I still cry desperately. Every time his name pops into a conversation, my tone lowers and gets heavier. The pain in my chest is not as acute as in the first week of his absence, and I don’t cry at night anymore before I go to sleep, but I don’t think it has to do with me having overcome it, I think I just have stopped letting it out. I have never had to deal with grief in this way in my adult life. I have lost people before, but not to death, rather to relationships that ended, and that type of grief is completely different. There is something so strange about missing someone that is no longer on this planet, someone that is no longer alive. The void they leave is completely different – it’s absolute. I think my main problem is that I wasn’t prepared. I didn’t imagine at all that I would just be back from Paris and he would leave me in less than a year. I didn’t expect for his life to deteriorate and end as quickly as it did, to see with my own eyes how his wounds got bigger and he got smaller. I didn’t have enough time. I needed more time. He slipped between my fingers and I couldn’t do anything to keep him with me without him suffering. I can’t really explain how much I miss him, it’s a pain so particular, there’s nothing quite like it. Like dying of thirst and being certain you will never find water again.
I don’t know how I’ll ever not feel terribly sad about not having him in the house anymore, not being able to kiss him good morning and good night, see him taking naps in his sofa, snoring deep into his dreams, hear him bark whenever I approach the door, or run hysterically to my room when I’m putting on my shoes to go out. I have no idea how I’ll ever not miss him. To be honest, I’m completely positive that it will never happen. I already know that the answer is that I have to learn to live with it, without him, and I also know that I don’t know how to do that. What is clear, however, as my body lets me know, is that I still haven’t processed all that has happened.
Rightfully, I can’t digest his loss, and I can’t digest the world – it’s too raw. I need to cook it a bit more. I need to sit with it a bit more, lose some water, and become a sweeter and warmer version of myself. I still need some more time.
x🌙