I never thought I’d experience different kinds of grief in 2025. They say that 2025, the Year of the Snake, is the year of shedding. True enough, I had a lot of shedding done — not by choice. It left me with no choice but to face it, and all of it was painful in all shapes and forms.
Experiencing grief as a young child felt different. Sometimes, I wish that innocence stayed with me.
I lost my grandfather at the age of 12 but never fully understood it. I thought grief was just getting on with it. Like, take it on the chin and move on, and not think about it.
Now that I am in my mid-30s, you see and feel it all. I did not know grief needed to be felt, to be witnessed. This year, I had to grieve a lot of things: possibilities, relationships, dreams, and people. It is like a nightmare that I could never wake up from. The only sensible thing was threading through this nightmare and hoping that it would soon turn into a sweet dream — or that a normal one would do.
So, what’s my take on all this? Grieving is like a Pandora’s box. Every emotion, memory, and realisation surfaces at once. It is very overwhelming. The body and mind are in constant fight-or-flight mode — if not, then survival mode. Picture this: you went to battle, armed with all the weapons you could have. By the time it is over, the only thing left of you is your metal armour. You came home still wearing it, refusing to let it be removed. That’s what it felt like.
Grief has solidified how I cope. If others cope by keeping themselves busy or doing activities, I cope better in isolation. I like to be left alone with my thoughts and my cats. I like the thought of no demands, no expectations, no obligations while I sort myself and my thoughts. I asked the people around me to talk to me like normal. It was the closest I could be to reality. Maybe it was to divert my attention, or maybe I just needed to be talked to without hurting.
I yearned for peace and stability.
For stillness.
For quietness.
On top of these, I found it challenging seeing my husband hurting because he is seeing me in a different light. I get it – he doesn’t want to see me hurting and struggling – but how do you even manage that? He instinctively want to fix me , but he can’t. As much as it pained me, I fought one more obstacle: the need to be understood.
I had to be more vocal about my needs because I felt that the opinions of others derailed me from understanding myself and my grief. I was already emptied out. I had nothing left to give, so the last thing I wanted was to fight another battle I could no longer fight. My glass was empty; I had nothing more to pour. I just needed someone to witness it, hold the darn glass still, and wait until I could fill it up again.
They say grief isn’t linear, and navigating that felt like being on standstill. It’s learning how to ride the waves, learning to sit with the pain, the thoughts, the in-betweens. Merging the conscious and subconscious posed a different threat. The exhaustion hits differently.
So, navigating all that drained the already emptied-out tank. I had to swim through it because, amidst all this, I have a goal: to rise above, to move forward while honouring these experiences — and hoping that, at the end of this, life will be gentler and I will be able to breathe.
Eri's Thoughts 