Lurker > BeastTamerLara

Carbon-based life forms that evolved on Earth.

Is the fool still living on the hill?

Early this year, got the sudden news that one of my cousins (girl in her teens) passed away. Apparently one day she just started throwing up a lot, and the next morning she passed out and died on her way to a hospital. I used to be very close with that side of the family. I'd spent a lot of time with those cousins growing up and new her since she was a baby. She was always one of the happiest, bubbliest people I knew.

A few months after that, her mother, my aunt, also passed away.

I don't know how this makes me feel.

Sadness would be the expected emotional response. I can feel a weight on my chest and a fog in my head, just remembering the news again. I can feel the muscles in my eyes beginning to strain, as if I were about to cry, but something is blocking it.

Maybe part of me feels that I don't have any right to feel sad, since despite our past closeness I haven't been in contact with them for a few years after moving away. Nothing bad happened, just fell out of touch. Still, what right do I have to mourn them, if the relationships apparently meant so little that I couldn't maintain them?

Another part of me feels like it's not "my" tragedy. To dwell on it would be to make someone else's trauma about myself. If I felt sad about it, I'd be selfish. I'd be using their loss for my own self pity. And then I wonder if even having that concern means I'm just completely fucked in the head. Perhaps hypocritically, I would never judge anyone else in my position for those feelings, so why do I care so much?

Despite the pain in my eyes, I haven't cried over this since it happened. I'm making no effort to hold anything in, but my body simply won't shed tears. I want to cry, but my body won't let me. Instead it feels as if this recent loss has just become something heavy on my soul. I can neither process these emotions nor discard them. I can do nothing but carry the memory of those people and the impact of their passing.

And this isn't the first time this has happened. About ten years ago, my childhood friend passed away and I had a very similar response.

The people in my life who mean anything to me leave this world. I feel nothing but vague heaviness.

In the grand scheme of things, there's nothing uniquely sad about my experience. Countless people suffer more, and greater, losses than I have. It feels weird to be so confused by a life that barely compares to what other go through.

I don't know why these thoughts weigh so heavily.

I'd like to feel anything else.

The fact that every day my mission in life is to just be smarter than a three-year-old

And somehow get fucking played by the mischievous little gremlin constantly.

But it is sort of cute when I tell them "no" to something, then they grab my hand and lead me out of the room, and after they think I'm not looking they go right back to what I tried to stop them from, lol