Field Note: Grief MisXdressed

I didn't know it was grief. I didn't know I had grief.

GRIEF: a deep, poignant distress, sorrow, or anguish caused by a significant loss, most commonly the death of a loved one. It is a natural human emotion and a complex, individualized process involving emotional, physical, and mental responses such as anxiety, pain, and yearning.

I thought it was just life: unfair, unjust, hard. Just life. Suck it up.

Sometimes I thought I was angry. I was told it was.

Sometimes I thought I was jealous. I was told I was envious. Selfish. A bitch.

That is a nice stop word - bitch. Once they label you, they dismiss you as a package. Crazy bitch. Now that is powerful of them. They dismiss everything that came before. Wipes their accountability clear off the table, doesn’t it?

Sometimes I thought I was selfish, difficult, ungrateful, dramatic, too sensitive.

My grief was weaponized by those who didn’t want to bare it. My grief was weaponized by those who didn’t want ME to bare it. Made them uncomfortable. Highlighted the grief they were denying.

And now I am beginning to open my eyes and mind and heart to wonder how much of my emotional landscape was grief.

I feel like inner walls are falling inside me.

I was grieving!

Alone!

Not the obvious kind. Not funeral grief. Not sobbing in public grief. No black dress for me.

It was a quieter grief. A grief that lived in my nerves. A grief that arrived as irritability, envy, resentment, sharpness, exhaustion, longing.

A grief that said:

I wanted that. I needed that. I wish I had that too.

No one called it grief.

Instead, it became other things.

Grief became envy. Longing became selfishness. Hurt became anger. Admiration became jealousy. Need became weakness. Attraction became lust. Unmet needs became sacrifice.

I was convinced by others.

I saw someone embraced by beauty, opportunity, tenderness, freedom, silliness, creativity, encouragement — and it hurt. In my nervous system actual felt discomfort to pain. This was once I started to listen to it. I learned about “body scans.” Sounds silly. Easy to dismiss. But I gave it a chance.

I scanned my body, my soul, and I didn’t want to take anything from other people. I didn’t want them to have less. I didn’t want to hurt them. I felt the absence of what they had and I didn’t have. Like a grave injury. Like laying in your death bed but not dying. The pain was real.

I hurt because I wanted the good things, too.

That is different.

There is a grief in seeing what was possible and knowing you were not allowed it. There is a grief in seeing a child supported in ways you were not. There is a grief in watching softness unfold and realizing how much of your own life was spent bracing.

The irritation in my voice in my words are not to take anything away from another person, it was signaling my pain.

Even the phrase “my pain” carries shame for me. Selfish. Self centered. Weak. How I learned to talk to myself.

My parents gave their children things they didn’t have, and they grieved. They put nice things down. They soured them. On accident, they took the benefits of a nice house in a nice neighborhood they provided us and food and clothes they provided us as making us spoiled and soft.

Others had more and they were said to be spoiled and bad.

Oh, the confusion.

I thought that pain meant there was something ugly in me. My moral failing. My badness.

But there wasn't.

I thought conversely that pain was a badge of honor and showed I was worthy and strong. WTF dad?!

Now I understand why PARADOX is my favorite word of all words. I lived it before I knew a word for it exisited. Paradox.

Be ashamed and proud of your pain, daughter. Hold it, never heal it or put it down, or you will be weak, soft, spoiled.

I was humanness. I was denied fairness and comfort and blamed for showing it.

A child, a young adult, and older woman, I was simply experiencing the ache of wanting. The ache of not having. The ache of finally seeing what was missing.

I am learning that grief does not disappear because it is ignored. It waits. It settles into the body. It comes out sideways.

And maybe part of healing is learning to say:

Of course that hurt. Of course I wanted that. Of course I am grieving. I’m allowed. I’m allowed time to grieve on my terms and timeline.

Some people were given more softness, more encouragement, more protection, more freedom, more room to play, create, dream, fail, and simply be human.

I was often denied those things.

And when the hurt of that surfaced, it was treated like a failing.

The pain became the problem instead of the deprivation. In family. in friend groups. At work. In communities.

It is a common repeated realization. Our society doesn’t grieve what it won’t acknowledge or are improperly labeling.

Narratives formed:

That I was jealous. They were jealous. That I was selfish. They were selfish. That I was dramatic. They were dramatic. That I was difficult. They were difficult. That I was crazy. That they were crazy. That I was a bitch. They were assholes. That I should be grateful. They are ungrateful.

Gratitude demanded. Grief not allowed.

Fairness is treated as childish, unrealistic, weak. Injustice is normalized. Sometimes it is weaponized.

Zooming out, i realize compliments did not feel safe. Praise could carry jealousy, resentment, scorekeeping, punishment. So even kindness became danger. I learned you could not trust it.

I remember someone i loved and looked up to saying, “When I am jealous i just compliment people. And then I’m not jealous anymore.” Then I saw her do other things. Drink. Sabotage. Disappear. She was not jealous. She was denying grief and it was misshaping her making her someone I had to be careful around. I lost my safe person.

Grief was mislabeled so many times that I mislabeled it too. I never grieved my parents absence or deaths, i never grieved a job loss or a broken relationship. Never. That was weakness. Being a pussy. That was guilt. That was life.

Move on. Get over it. Put your big girl pants on. Pull up your panties. Grow some balls. Man up. Don’t be a bitch. I’m over it. Aren’t you?

The twisted mess this made in me is why naming feelings correctly matters.

If grief is called jealousy, you carry shame instead of sorrow. If hurt is called anger, you carry guilt instead of tenderness. If longing is called selfishness, you stop trusting your own needs. If admiration is called envy, beauty starts to hurt.

For years, I did not know I was carrying grief.

I was told I was angry. I was told I was jealous. I was told I was selfish. I was told I was difficult.

And eventually, I believed it. Too easily as a small child. Without resistance as a young adult.

I stopped asking what I was actually feeling. I stopped asking what hurt. I stopped asking what I needed.

I thought I was angry. I thought I was jealous. I thought I was bad.

But grief has a different shape. It says:

I wanted that. I missed that. I needed that. I deserved that too. Life was too hard. Life was demanding i carry things alone that were too much. I need a break. I needed time. I needed safety.

When feelings are named correctly, they become easier to hold. There is relief in saying:

This is grief. This is sadness. This is longing. This is hurt.

Not because the pain disappears, but because I stop making myself wrong for having it. Then i can allow it, like it move through and I can release it.

Shame denies us the ability to process. We deny the shameful feelings. And I suspect under all shameful feelings is that scary word of all scary words: GRIEF.

Wanting more softness was never a failing. Hurting over what was missing was never a failing.

It was soul crushing to carry that much unmet need and then be told the pain itself was wrong.

There is nothing bad about wanting softness.

We all deserve soft landings. We deserve space and time to grief. We are allowed to feel our feelings without interference.

No longer do I allow other people to label my feelings - my attractions are not their lust, my wanting is not avarice, gluttony, envy, my fear is not cowardice, it is caution. My discernment is not judgement or snobbery.

GRIEF IS AN IMPORTANT PART OF BEING HUMAN.

TEACHING THE MISLABELING OF FEELINGS IS ABUSIVE EVEN WITHOUT THE INTENT OF ABUSE.

We have to acknowledge GRIEF, give it space, and treat it with the reverence it deserves.

Life is full of injustice, neglect, and abuse. We must acknowledge it for all and allow others to acknowledge it. And we must stop mislabeling it and making it feel shameful to just be human.

The humanness in me recognizes the humanness in you. It’s not forgiveness or pardoning. It is finally acknowledging.