Grief

Grief is most often used as a term describing the effects of losing a loved one. Someone close to you passes, be it family, friend, or lover, and it is said you will work through the stages of grief. Different people experience and express grief in all different manners; in general, however, we all know the main stages of the process. We all know that people go from one stage to the next, ultimately seeking to find acceptance and the ability to push forward again. Despite the hole they might feel, the love that was lost, or the companionship they miss, most people eventually find a way to go on.

I guess what I'm realizing is that grief and the process behind it don't just apply to the loss of someone you love, specifically. They can apply to the loss of anything. At the moment, I feel what I'm working to overcome is the grief of losing this time in our lives. Never again will all of us be in this place, with each other, as who we are. Never again will you be the person you are right now ... for better, worse, or indifferent, you will never be the same.

Some of my high school friends and I stay in contact now. We mostly talk online, sending quick messages or thoughts every once in a blue moon. I'm even in the same situation with a lot of my Lehigh friends who have already graduated. Life rolls on, and even when we see one another again, even if it's in the same haunts and with the same group- it's just not the same. The thing that is different is us, individually and collectively. There's no way to go back and be the way we were.

As life passes like this, it also comes with mistakes, some with no chance for redemption. Each mistake, however, comes with the opportunity to move forward with that much knowledge at your disposal. In addition to the failure of time, I thus grieve for the fact that there is no way to retrieve time which has already passed. I grieve for those mistakes and the consequences they have brought about, as well as the minor missteps along the way. I grieve for the chances I never took and the opportunities I may have squandered or never realized.

The most important part of these revelations is that, as with all grief, I must also come to realize that these feelings are okay. Despite the pain, loss, regret, or other emotions that recent changes have spurred in me, I must know that they are a part of life. As my grandfather says, you have to live each day as if the best is still to come. Get up with a purpose. Wake each morning with the deliberate goal of working through the feelings you feel. Trust in the future, and in yourself.

It's okay to be sad. It's okay to miss the friends and loved ones who are leaving even before they're gone. It's also okay to look back on the last four years and wonder what you might have done differently, if given the chance. But you can't go around those feelings ... you have to go through them. There is no secret to escaping them. Not in the bottom of a bottle, or in giving in to temptation, or in forsaking those things which once gave you purpose. Trying to get out those ways is easy- but you'll ultimately never get anywhere.

Tonight I ponder and sleep. Tomorrow, I will watch the dawning of a new day ... and begin to push forward.

Live each day as if the best is yet to come.