Grief & Other Things

not to kill the vibe or anything (this is sort of a joke; now laugh)

I know it’s been a minute, and I fully plan on sharing an April recap along with some news about the next Baked Beans box, but today I just want to share a part of myself. This week marked the 4-year anniversary of the death of one my closest friends. In the past, I’ve written and shared my words on my social media account, but it feels right to use this space—a space I’ve created of my own written words—to do it here instead.

The truth of the matter is that this is about to be some heavy shit so if it is not for you, do not hesitate to skip this post. I understand :).

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TW: death, grief, loss, suicide

It’s funny how grief continues to shape shift; funny in a peculiar, not in a ‘ha-ha’ kind of way, of course. Grief feels like an old friend. It’s familiar in a way that reminds me of older parts of myself, has shaped the person that I am, and with its imprint, will forever inform the person I’m becoming. Some years our reunion takes me by surprise, dragging me into its orbit while I kick and scream in protest, an unwilling participant in just how heavy I feel. Other years it comes on slowly, seducing me like a slow-burn lover till everything I touch is grief.

This year my grief feels different.

It is different.

It’s the first time I’ve experienced this version of it.

For the last few years, there have been parts of me that have remained buried—living in an underworld of the ‘my friend died’ AU. Some of those years, most of me lived in that world, isolated from the land of the living I so desperately wished I could be a part of.

Finally, all of me came up for air last fall, no longer in survival mode for the first time in a little over three years.

No longer in survival mode for the first time since she took her life.

As I returned to the land of the living, I could feel myself for the first time in a long time. Between starting a new job and learning how to find a joy that wasn’t in some way attached to sorrow, I filled my days with music, with my artistry, and I brought friends with me along the way. I went to concerts, stayed out too late, and welcomed new faces into my life.

It’s as if I could breath again—only I was learning how to do it as whoever I became on the other side of my loss.

My friend Maria was a complicated person and sometimes, she was hard to love. One of the only female fighters at the gym, we met while I began my journey with Muay Thai. She called me her sister in fight, paired up together for pad work, and I cried to her in the sauna about a dumb boy once, earning me this honor. Together, we competed in our first TBA tournament, we attended our coach’s fight night watch parties, and we celebrated many of her birthdays at various karaoke bars.

She was also a bit (a lot) of a bully on the mats, and she was exceptional at pushing people away with her hardest parts (sometimes literally—try taking a knee from Maria), an eye roll, and less than savory words muttered under her breath through a clenched jaw.

But other times, she let me in, and I learned about her life, the softness she often hid in the toxically masculine world of combat sports we had found ourselves in, and we tried our best to get through the pandemic by bingeing seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Every year since she died, I’ve written myself out of my own pain—the grief I felt around the anniversary (death-iversary??) intense, sharper, drawn out, and all-consuming. This year, I’ve written myself into it. It’s not like I’ve forgotten. I could never forget. But my grief this year feels distant. It’s come in waves, ebbing and flowing in frequency and in intensity—something that’s caught me by surprise. Even earlier today, it felt like this: like my brain wouldn’t recognize what my body already knew. This year, the sadness that usually swallows me whole, feels like it’s just on the other side of the door. I can barely hear it through the layers of cladded layers of wood, and it’s just out of reach as it whispers to me that a familiar kind of pain is waiting for me on the other side.

So I paused. I took some time off. I sat down and opened the metaphorical door only to find that the weight I’m being asked to carry this year, doesn’t feel as heavy as it normally does.

I think sometimes it feels like a betrayal—healing, or really anything else than being thrust into utter despair—a betrayal of the person, of your pain, maybe of yourself. I recently read Sloane Crosley’s most recent memoir, Grief is For People, where she reckons with her own best friend’s suicide. I highlighted a line (I highlighted many lines), one of which mirrored some of my feelings from previous years:

“How will he know you loved him,” she asks, “unless you try to destroy yourself?”

I think this is why we’re so afraid to part with our own suffering.

I know I’m certainly guilty of feeling this way.

But instead, I’m letting myself have this: a year of being sad but okay, while not okay but also much more okay than the previous years.

A year where the loss of her doesn’t colonize my entire existence.

And it doesn’t mean that I’ll feel this way forever. I know this. It will continue to morph into whatever it will become.

Life is short and it’s also long.

And I’m learning how to make peace with the fact that nothing stays the same.

For now, four years into it, I’ll stand in front of the open door, knowing that this is the thing I have to do for the rest of my life, and each year, it just might look different than the last.