Elisa A. Escalante/ LCSW/ 10-10-2023
“I hate that I grieve before I lose something or someone. It’s not enough that I still feel my past grievances, my brain also grieves the future. Like it knows all too well that I’m going to hurt again.” -EaE
I had once broken down and cried to a Chaplain during a military training exercize. Why? Well, I wasn’t particularly religious… but there was no one else to talk to. I remember him talking to me about all the different types of grief. And, that we do not just grieve death, we grieve so many things in life too. We grieve old friends and exes, we grieve a life we thought we would have forever, that instead got torn to shreds. We grieve moving away from everything we have known, we grieve when we lose our sense of purpose and identity. I’m also learning over time, that we can grieve things before they are gone. Like a mixture of anxiety and grief. It’s the knowledge of knowing you ‘WILL INEVITABLY’ lose the good thing that is right in front of you. Or, they will lose you. This isn’t ‘just’ my trauma speaking, it’s fact. Either one person dumps another, or one person dies before the other one. Remembering this cold reality can truly rob someone of the present joy. I don’t want my brain to be wired this way, but I believe due to the fact that I’ve already had grief, trauma and talked to so many people with traumatic grief; there’s no other way I can think. It’s almost like, ‘the death of hope and imagination’ as we age.
But this blog will not be about the grief of losing someone. It will be more so about the other types of grief, the grief we experience in our lifetime even when no one is gone yet. It’s a part of life. There is no one that is not susceptible to the pain of loss through a lifetime. We are actually, all, technically grieving together over time.
We grieve post success (Post success depression) Have you ever worked hard toward a goal for years and years? Did you imagine your life after you succeeded? Did you picture success with all the ‘happiness in the world’? Did you complete your goal only to find that you were ecstatic for just a little while? But then, unhappy shortly after? Did you then wonder why you weren’t as happy as you thought you would be after your accomplishment? That was likely your young brain believing that there was some sort of concrete way to attain permanent happiness. Eventually we learn that happiness is fleeting, and every route we take has suffering; even post accomplishment. But yes, ‘Post success depression’ is very real. I felt depressed after I finished HS, after I finished my military deployment & military contract. After I finished my college degree’s etc. A part of what we are grieving is the excitement of ‘the chase’. Chasing goals can be more fun than ‘maintenance’ goals. Why? More dopamine! In the chase there is imagination, hopes and dreams. Within success is reality. Reality isn’t always as fun as hopes and dreams. (You still deserve to celebrate your success regardless. You worked your ass off!)
We grieve the days or weeks as they pass by Some patients have talked to me about evening ‘blues’. Meaning they are sad that the day is almost over. I’ve also experienced the oh so common ‘Sunday Blues’, as I am a Monday through Friday worker. We grieve as our days or weeks or years end. I believe maybe New years resolution goals & celebration of the new year could also be a ‘grieving ritual’ turned positive. Time passes, it just keeps ticking and ticking and ticking. Sometimes I have even found myself pausing in time, feeling terrified as I know i’m not actually ‘pausing’ anything. We have no control over this. It feels faster as I get older. (How about you??)
We grieve going our seperate ways Break ups generally SUCK. Even when they are for the best. No matter how good the break up is there will be some grief along with it. Breaking up with intimate partners, close friends, coworkers, family members and/ or aquintances. We grieve. Sometimes the ‘going seperate ways’ is simply in proximity. And then we can continue a relationship via telecommunication. You will still miss having that person closer to you for in person interactions. But then, some breaks are permanent. Sometimes it has to be no contact because the relationship became toxic. It’s normal to ‘miss parts of someone’ even when they were terrible for you. After all, something kept you in that relationship/ friendship for a while. With this type of grief, both regret and rage could also be quite prevalent depending on how toxic the relationship became. Just remember, if the change ‘feels right’, it was probably right for you.
We grieve trade schools/ college’s/ jobs & area codes A former psychologist I worked for told us all: “If I could get paid to be a professional student, I would”. I didn’t truly understand this until my college experience was done; I found myself in a miserable ‘first career post college.’ Oh, how I missed those class rooms, and only ‘the pressure of doing assignments’ and nothing else. All I had to do was learn. I didn’t have to ‘save lives’. I missed certain aspects of the military too… but not many! Mostly the camraderie. The ability to get on my phone and ask for help, and know that a handful of friends would drop what they are doing to come help; that’s how we were trained to be. And, that’s something we don’t get in the civilian sector…. especially in modern times. I grieve my favorite restaurants in places I used to live. I grieve certain lifestyles depending on the area code. The city is awful but it was quite cool to have an unlimited amount of activities. Of course, you will miss people that you met in almost every environment. People that you wish you could just kidnap and take with you to your gaining location!
We can even Grieve things that never happened…. (because we wish they would have) I found this to be quite prevalent when I was younger; grieving things I wished could happen, but never did. I grieved a Bio Mom I never had. Mother’s Day hit’s and all it does is remind me of this. The statements/ quotes of: “There is no love like a Mother’s love” only reminds me of the question of: “Is there something wrong with me to have never received my Bio Mom’s love?” I grieve a full childhood with my Bio Dad that I never had; he was present for roughly half of my childhood. The military took him away. Social norms & the nuclear family could lead to this type of grief. Society feeds us a template of what life is ‘supposed to look like’, and if we don’t have it, we may grieve. You may grieve a childhood you wished for, that never happened. This can carry on into adulthood too. Ruminating about the losses. Raging about the fact that the voids left are now your burden to carry. Now you must heal after a heartbreaking childhood of things that happened to you or didn’t happen to you. But, NOT because of you.
We grieve our younger identities/ personalities/ attributes With aging, comes limitations. Slowly but surely, you might become more tired. It get’s just a tad bit harder to stand up and sit down. It may take longer to recover from illness, and more ‘random’ illnesses may pop up out of no where. Your workouts get shorter because you tire faster, your body becomes less ‘fit’. You need longer recovery periods between strain. You also notice your motivation levels lower. You notice maybe even less tolerance to pain. You begin to believe, that maybe, you are losing ‘your grit’. The reality? You are aging. You are also (hopefully) growing wiser. There is so much transformation that happens with aging, I cannot possibly cover it all. I’m also not that old just yet; 34 years young. I know that I have grieved my teen body, and I grieved my ‘twenties’ body. I also grieved certain aspects of my younger personality. There were pros and cons. I was more tolerant back then, but also too much of a pushover. I was more quiet back then, but I was not ‘being true to myself’. I had a loooot more mental and physical energy back then for any & everything that came my way. But, I did not know how to prioritize, and how to say NO when I needed to. If you miss ‘a younger version of you’, understand that there are likely pros & cons to that younger version. Perhaps, that version of you doesn’t exist anymore for a reason. Humans must adapt to their environments, situations and age.
Functionally Mental 