Candid Post

I’m in a bit of a fragile mental state at the moment.

Last night, my grandmother died. Heart attack. Sudden. Instant. Gone.

It’s not the first time a family member has died, but it’s the first time I’ve been old enough to actually comprehend the concept of death.

Both my grandfathers died back in the early 1990’s, and I was really young then. I barely remember. Fast forward 24 years later, and I’m not sure how to react.

Naturally, I’m sad. I loved my grandmother, the fact she’s gone has cut me up. The boyfriend was out at aikido, as he is every Monday evening, so I had to deal on my own until he got home.

I cried. I don’t like doing that in front of people. Not because I subscribe to some macho macho school of masculinity where showing emotion is WEAK AND FOR WOMEN AND GAYS, but because I am an UGLY crier. I look like the Wicked Witch of the West mid-melt. I worry someone’ll drop a house on me.

I went to work. Do people take time off? I didn’t. I figured that keeping busy would take my mind off things. It didn’t work.

I played WoW. That always cheers me up. I couldn’t really focus though. Took some silly screenshots, chatted with my guildies a little, then logged off.

This was one of the pictures. Amused me. The idea of a stealthy panda who can’t help but stand in a spotlight.

All this is new to me. People die all the time, but I’ve got to 29 without it actually impacting in my life. Maybe I can call that fortunate, maybe it’s screwed me up because I don’t know what to do. Do I dress all in black and sit in a rocking chair? Not my style. Do I carry on as I normally do? Feels almost wrong to do so.

People talk about the Kübler-Ross model a lot. 5 stages of grief that supposedly everyone goes through. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. I feel like I’ve skipped all the way through to stage 4. I didn’t deny anything, I felt no anger, I see no sense in bargaining. Is this normal?  Kübler-Ross herself says not everyone feels all the responses, so hey ho, there you go.

I’m gonna try and carry on as normal, just do what I feel like. If I want to cry, I will, if I want to write depressing, angsty poetry… maybe I’ll hold off on that, there’s enough of that out there already. I’ll game, I’ll walk, I’ll remember, I’ll do as I do.

This is kinda cathartic. A lot of it may not make too much sense, like I’m just randomly rambling, but it’s helping me process. It’s my blog, I post what I like, after all.