Forever Burned: Navigating the Pain of Unshakeable Grief

I leave in 3 days, and I never thought I would be longing this helplessly to go home. It’s weird because I longed to get out of the nest only a year ago. Go explore the whole wide world. Only to realize a few months later that all the shiny lights and supposedly greener grass on the other side are not all what they are drummed up to be.

Sure, I love that I don’t have to answer when I stay out late till 1AM in the morning. But then again, I am thousands of kilometers away from home and alone. Only myself to have my back. Sure, friends are there. But you reach a certain point in life where you realize that friends have their own lives. They are fighting their own battles. You cannot expect them to carry you. You lose touch, meet only on weekends, and have sparse conversations. Life comes in the way.

The only constant thing, I feel, is the love your parents have for you. They can’t help it now, can they? They have taken up the arduous task of caring for you and carrying you for life. Now, not everyone’s relationship is identical with their parents. Still, I believe very few other relationships can come close when it comes to the purity of love that is there between parents and children. If the stars aligned in your favor and you have been endowed with such a pure form of love, cherish it, be grateful for it, and thank the universe every day that you were lucky to receive such a gift.

You may feel that I am glorifying and throwing out too many words and drumming it all up more than what it is. I might be. But remember, you will in your lifetime, if you’re lucky, experience only a handful of relationships that are worth their weight in gold. Priceless even. You wouldn’t know why you were blessed with such people. The only thing you can do is be grateful and do the best you can for those people.

As I look forward to returning home, I cannot help but overthink. My mind ran into an overdrive, and I woke up one afternoon sweating with a peculiar heartache. And soon enough, the heartache expanded and overwhelmed my tear ducts, and there I was, crying, heaving, unable to control the thoughts that came to me.

One day, they won’t be there when I land at the airport. The house would be empty. My mother won’t prepare my favorite dish when I reach home. My father wouldn’t ask me how the flight was or help carry my bags inside, no matter how much I opposed it.

I’ll stand at the door, terrified to turn the key, afraid to enter the empty, dark room and switch on the lights. See all the things, all the stuff that has been there since I was a kid.

My heart will sink into a fathomless void. “Mama, why aren’t you here?”. “Papa, why aren’t you helping me with my bags?” The pain will rush through my veins, and my brain will feel like it will explode. The sheer pain, this sheer pain, this absolute madness of pain will take over me. Even more strongly than how it does now, as I think about it. And it will linger for a long time, forever, till the day I take my last breath. This pain can’t be replaced. It can’t be imitated. It can’t be taken from me. But in this pain, I will remember that I had something inexplicably real with them. No matter if there’s a life after this one, but in this one, we shared something that will forever burn inside my soul and bring me warmth in the coldest of days.

I have never told them how much I love them. I wouldn’t know where to start. No amount will be enough. Never enough. How can I give them something that will be enough when I’m their creation. I can only be grateful. Grateful for the things they have done. Grateful for the sacrifices that they have made for me. And I know how much, how difficult their lives had been and through all that they have carried me. And they still do. They carried me even though I was a pain in the ass. I’ve always been that.

I bow my head to you before I bow my head to god. I have been blessed with them as my parents in a divine intervention. And that is the greatest gift that the almighty has given to me.

I cannot ask for more. I shouldn’t ask for more.

Regrets. Regrets will always be there. No matter how much I try. Maybe I could have picked up that call in the office. Maybe I should not have cut the call short when I had to go out. Perhaps I should have called them back when I said I would. Those days when I didn’t speak to them, they won’t return. That can’t be undone.

The only way is forward, they say. Even though I have a strong belief in that. But I don’t think I can promise that I won’t look back. I’ll always look back. And let the pain take me over. Overwhelm me, destroy me in that moment. I will cry, and my blood will carry the pain all through my body. Every part of me will ache. I will long for their voices, their hands on my cheek, their hugs, their eyes when they look at me.

As I grow older, I am slowly realizing that moving forward doesn’t always mean you forget your past. Despite all that happened in the past, all the good and the bad, you still push forward and live on. And try to do better than you did yesterday.

But I guess that is life, dear reader. There is no light without darkness. There’s no happiness without pain. There’s no point to this life if it is never-ending.

I will keep living on until it’s my time. There’s no getting out of life.

“Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.” — Carl Jung