Grief

 Grief is such a complex feeling because of the weight the word has. You expect it to just mean the actual definition that it holds with itself. The American Psychological Association dictates it as,    

                    Grief is often distinguished from bereavement and mourning. 

So how could anyone possibly grieve anything that was never physical nor there in the first place? 

    There is a deep loss about the person I used to be and who I've become now. I hold in my doubts and let go of my peace when I'm in conversations, I get sporadic and create situations I wished never even existed, I get so excited and ruin potential connections that never had to get complicated. 

    I have been grieving the independent picture I saw of myself. There are lines of my past I choose not to look at. I keep reaching for a life that was never even really fully there and will never be there. I funnel and channel everything into moments that live on. At the end of it all too, there was nothing to be done. I have done a multitude of public talks, introduced people to hundreds of people, been nominated awards and after all that, there is still this burden that lays on the fact that I am not my own individual. I escape into a hole all the time of what my tiny body holds myself into. I teach children now that same age and I wonder at the confidence and pride they hold throughout the day as well as the pride I feel having the honor to be in their presence.

    At 13 I wanted to be a journalist. At 13 I wanted to write and tell the world my feelings on things where I could explore the complexity of every single thing I felt was complicated. I have not become this and in ways I am grateful that I didn't but at the same time there is a hole in my chest. I feel this burden of not being as efficient as I once wanted to be and that I'm almost stuck. There's a lot of deep emotion that I'm trying to let go and a lot of moving on I've done. Sometimes I wish that I was this image of a person I saw myself as this deep contempt writer when I was 17 but I hold back on the dream that never really flourished. I've lived multiple different lives and I get really upset coming to terms that academia will more than likely not be for me, that writing for a life time will burn me out, that my life in this bubble shell of a romantic entanglement might actually kill me. 

    There's a lot of reality that's been setting in and I'm still not ready in the ways that I thought I would've been and there is no certainty on what will happen in my life. I think at times I hold this standard that I need to live in my own shell rather than care about the standards I create for myself. I think there are times where I feel like I haven't done the work I've wanted to. In my little head, I always expected that Palestine would be free, that I would lead organizations forever and do the peace work I wanted to. I do still work with these goals, but I am not a superhuman. 

    The grief does still exist but at times as well too, coming to terms with reality is really the punch in the face. Not everyone is going to like you, your dreams are not really what you think they are, the life you try to develop can fizzle out and actively be destroyed. There is so much grief with that and sometimes I think of the fact that this could be a response to the system we live in but I'm sick of intellectualizing everything to where I can't even process everything. What is going on right now is life, not a system breaking me down, not a man actively ruining everything in my space, not the actions of feeling restricted from everything around me, it is the cause and effect of my own actions. 

    I've felt this mourning of who I once was for the past two months and since last week, there has been a shift simply because I learned I needed to just be quiet for ten minutes. There is a process of learning who you are and feeling unseen but in all seriousness, sometimes you need to be desired elsewhere. Sometimes that grief will overflow and leave you bedridden for months leaving you behind with a void, but the failure means you will have success elsewhere. As corny as it is, there really is light at the end of a dark tunnel.

    As I've begun to distance myself from the dream of academia and a lifelong pursuit for activism, I've learned my love is with teaching. I've started subbing and realized that all the wishes of being wanted have a deep value in the kids who see me. They ask me if I'm in bands, what kind of music I like, if I love drawing and what books I love to read. They wish to dream big and I dream along with them which in its own self, gives me purpose.

    It's worth mentioning that I am also barely picking out the fruit of experiencing a newer more calm life that I've never realized was for me and in ways, I am so grateful to be as open to the things. The patience I have learned with kids has given me the chance to understand and be forgiving to myself as sometimes the grief will overflow, but I will get a bucket and pour that grief somewhere else.