Why Am I Not Over This By Now?

On allowing grief to naturally flow

The morning after I caught my ex cheating, I messaged my friend Anna and told her what happened. She jumped in her car and drove across two hours of rush hour traffic to be with me. When she arrived, I was in a state of shock that felt chillingly familiar: I’d last felt this way almost fifteen years ago when my boyfriend died by suicide.

So much of my experience of moving through the shock of my break-up has felt like my experience of grief. Except, my ex didn’t die and there were a couple of months of disentangling our shared lives. During that time of dealing with packing and unpacking suitcases, explosive text exchanges and my crushed self-esteem, Anna made me a card.

Anna makes fantastic cards. If she wasn’t so talented at many other things, I’d encourage her to do it for a living. She drew me a card that radiated with sunshine and the words: ‘Better Days Ahead.’ As I waited for those better days, I’d look to that card and hold faith in what I knew to be true: better days were ahead.

Those better days came as we knew they would. I moved back into the flat and slowly got used to him not being there. I thought about him less and began to see some light at the end of the tunnel of my grief. It was just then that my grief dragged me back.

I turned 35 last week and I can’t stop thinking about how I was 32 when I met my ex. It reminds me that during those years, I had the opportunity to meet someone who I could have started a family with. I’ve told him that I’m angry with him because of this. Yet, he still wants more of my time.  

I bumped into him outside of the supermarket and I didn’t want to talk. ‘Come on,’ he said. Those words came with a tone of: ‘Surely, you should be over this by now?’

I’m not over it.   

On my birthday, he sent a small gift and I thought that was nice, but I also knew that he’d seize this window of opportunity to reopen the communication channels, which he did. I shut it down, as I still need no contact as I heal. Yet, I don’t know if it was hearing from him, my birthday, or perhaps it was always going to happen, but I feel like in recent days that I’ve gone backwards with my grief. I know we say things about grief like ‘progress isn’t linear’, but when you’re sitting in it, it doesn’t feel as simple as that.

I can’t stop thinking about what I’ve lost. I’m frustrated and it’s isolating because people, including me, think I should be over it by now. There should be a sixth stage of grief: the one where everyone else moves on, apart from you.

So many stories focus on the immediate aftermath of grief and I wanted my book about my boyfriend’s death to span the impact my grief had on me for a decade. When I worked on adapting the book for the screen, I was told that in the land of show business, it’d be better if the story contained itself to a shorter period. As consumers, viewers and readers, we want to believe that grief can be contained. But we can’t control our grief and the more we attempt to do so, the greater the power it has over us. I know this to be true and yet, here I am: frustrated. I want a summer of belly laughing with friends and witty WhatsApp exchanges and to feel sexy, uplifted and alive. I talked to a friend about my recent dating experiences and she said: ‘Oh God, that’s depressing.’

I’m bumming people out with my grief and I’m bumming myself out with it, too. I’m still yearning for something that was suddenly ripped from me and I feel hollow in the emptiness left behind. I’m battling positive memories with negative ones and being harsh on myself for my self-delusion: the relationship I was happy in was a fantasy. A break-up is grief and grief is loss. I’ve lost the person in my life and our imagined future. I’ve lost an understanding of my place in the world. I’m floating and unsure when I’ll feel grounded again and when I’ll be in those better days ahead.

In May, I was by the sea just outside of Barcelona. It was the start of summer, so the sea was too cold for me to dive into just yet. Instead, I watched the waves ripple peacefully in and out of the shore. When I imagine that beach and its gentle waves, I think I need to allow my grief to ripple through me as nature allows the waves to pass through the shore. There are better days ahead but also worse ones. People I love will die and it’s more likely than not that I’ll experience another break-up and whatever else life throws my way.

Grief is an inevitable part of life and something few, if any, of us will avoid. We can’t shame or rush grief, but it needs to be embraced as part of the natural flow of life. I choose to stand still and let it calmly ripple through me as it’s as futile to resist grief as it is to stop the ocean’s collision with the shore. I’m sure that if I’ll allow it to move through me that, before long, I’ll be ready for those better days.

With love,

Tiff x

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