Making peace with grief
Every day, I feel like all that is left within me is to grieve and mourn.
It is hard to imagine how an organ the size of a fist can contain immense feelings. When you try to rationalize it, you end up realizing the absurdity of the metaphor. I want to make sense of it all, but I keep going in circles. Maybe it is not meant to be figured out by a 20-year-old, yet I want to try.
The choices that were ever made, the things that were never done, the versions of you that never made it, the paths you never took, and the moments you wish had gone differently. How would you hold this all at once without making your palms bleed? How could you carry this weight without it ever crushing you?
Could I ever reconcile with that kid who dreamt of pursuing medicine? Who once asked, maybe if you only tried harder, perhaps things could have ended differently? The heaviness whispers that you should have done more. It’s hard to get trapped in an endless loop of yearning, guilt, and shame. I could only wish that things were not hard for us. For me and that younger self.
We could not afford it.
I thought that I had already made peace with the fact that no public universities accepted my college applications, nor that I was smart enough to secure or maintain a scholarship at a private school with a program that surely cost a fortune. It is said that if you truly desire something, you will do anything for it. However, if it comes at the expense of your sanity and the reality that you need to graduate early so you can help your family, I believe the roots of my qualms can be understood.
Mourning over something like this is something my heart cannot fully grasp because it is not a person that I have lost, but a future. And how do you grieve something that never fully existed? A love that did not even reach its full potential? A fragment that never had the chance to exist?
I do not know where my grief sits the heaviest. In regret? Comparison? Exhaustion? Because all of this feels like it is drowning me. No matter where I turn, there is no relief. In hindsight, this is not just grief; it is everything all at once.
Every time others try to console my ache, my lips always utter that I am okay. That I already moved on. But there is an inevitable feeling of melancholy, a ghost tapping on my shoulder that it is still there—that the woes are still in its wake. Lingering. Looming. Lurking.
I do not wish that I never want to feel it again; I am just hoping to learn how to carry its weight when grief attempts to return.
Because here is the thing:
Regret means I cared.
Comparison means I dreamed.
Exhaustion means that I kept going.
Sometimes I wonder if a part of me is still reaching for something beyond the pain. Is that a part of me that is worth listening to?
I do not know anymore. Your answer is probably yes, but even when you know something is right—logically, rationally—it does not always feel like it. It feels like there is a gap between understanding and feeling it in your bones.
All that I am sure of right now is I need to be gentle with the new version of myself—the dreams, and what I hope to become. I do not have to know exactly who I am becoming yet. I just trust that I am making space for something new. But if I am going to be honest, all of this still feels foreign.
Truth be told, I can understand the unfamiliarity of finally accepting your unbecoming—when you are slowly unclenching a fist you have been holding for so long, you can sometimes forget what an open hand feels like.
Accepting these changes feels like stepping into a space where everything is both lighter and unsettling because even though you are releasing something heavy, you are also letting go of something known.
One day, all I wish for is to learn to sit with that openness, that uncertainty. Not rushing to grab onto something new just to fill the space, but letting my hand stay open long enough to remember that it can be.
Grief was not supposed to be pushed away. When it knocks on your door, let it in, offer a chair, and ask if it wants a glass of water. Ask why it was there. You do not have to make sense of it all. You do not have to name those unwanted feelings. Perhaps, you can put it down one by one, little by little. That the way forward is not about fixing everything at once—it is about finding even the smallest corner of that weight and setting it down for just a moment.
Because the best way to deal with grief is to feel it when it hits.
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Isaac Reinhart Delic, 20, is a third-year student taking communication at the National University-Manila.
