Vivid dreams, moments of weakness, and finding a new reality amidst grieving a terrible loss: ~3 month update
Grief is an intense feeling. I’ve heard it described as both a ‘forbidden love’ and ‘deep sorrow.’ It’s really a blend of passion and gut-wrenching sadness — grieving someone you loved deeply is equivalent to loving someone who can’t physically reciprocate the feelings back to you.
Immediately following my father’s passing, I kept myself busy with PhD recruitment events and reading professors’ new publications in anticipation of interviews. Making a career jump is a wonderful distraction, especially if it’s as profound of a jump as choosing PhD programs. Nevertheless, I find myself having moments of distress here and there, especially when I think what my father would have thought had he still been alive.
My parents relied on me to advocate on their behalf when it came to making medical decisions. I was so used to playing this role that I didn’t think twice about it. I jumped to the occasion when my help was needed because I love my family and I’m deeply grateful for the sacrifices they’ve made and continue to make for me. When I first started college, I thought I wanted to go to medical school to someday be my parents’ doctor — unrealistic goals fueled my dreams. However, those dreams were crushed when my father first became ill with other conditions, years prior to his tragic metastatic cancer diagnosis. Through shadowing physicians, I realized I could only be emotionally invested in my loved one’s and my own health and medical care. As an empath, I don’t have the capacity to take on others’ suffering nor do I wish to desensitize myself to such feelings. As a result, I found my way to wanting to pursue a career as a research scientist — I’m determined to advance science and knowledge in a given subject in some capacity. Unfortunately, my father won’t be around to see my desires come to fruition.
One of the worst things about grieving a loss within your immediate family, is that those who you love are also grieving the same person, albeit in a different capacity. The people I want to discuss my feelings with the most are also grieving my father — the grief becomes inescapable as it finds its way into every conversation. I’m torn between wanting to reflect and share happy memories, and wanting to distance myself from the event to focus on moving forward. I’m in a good place where the grief is no longer clouding my day-to-day life, and I can think finally think rationally and clearly about decisions I’m making.
The first month following my father’s death, I couldn’t believe he was physically gone. I kept thinking I would just wake up from this nightmare…. I found myself thinking he was still in the hospital and would come home any minute. At times I would get mad at myself that I didn’t do enough and somehow negatively contributed to his grim outcome. While these intrusive thoughts are inevitable, they’re temporary. Eventually they go away, or at least they did for me. Over time, I developed better ways to rationalize and process moments of mental weakness.
A friend I met on Clubhouse and connected with on Twitter recently reminded me that grief isn’t linear. There are days when you feel like you’ve conquered your grief and see the light at the end of the long, dark tunnel you’ve been trapped in. Then, there are days when you feel like you’re back at the beginning of the journey. Despite inevitable mental and emotional setbacks, moments of sadness become easier to bounce back from over time. As with anything, practice makes it easier to develop more sustainable coping mechanisms and you start to remember that after every low comes a high if you can choose to invite happiness back into your life.
If you haven’t experienced a profound loss in your life, my words may come across as very dramatic. Perhaps I’m more dramatic by nature than the average person, but I tend to play out various scenarios in my head with regards to every significant event that I think will come across my plate. It’s a little embarrassing to admit, but when my father first became seriously ill, I tried to envision scenarios of what could happen to our family if he passed away. I played a series of events in my head and how I thought I’d react in such situations. It sounds very morbid to reflect on those thoughts, but I found it beneficial to helping me handle the real event when it finally occurred. Along those lines, I’m naturally a very vivid dreamer regardless of whether I’ve consumed any alcohol, sleeping pills, melatonin, or valerian. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t have such vivid dreams that they often feel like reality. Ever since my father passed away, I see him in my dreams nearly every single night. In some ways, I’m grateful to have this opportunity to cement his physical appearance in my subconscious, where I can still picture him with ease whenever I think of him. However, I also often wake up emotionally exhausted, feeling as though I had lived another life in my head during the hours I was asleep — physically and mentally rested, but emotionally drained for the new day. Regardless, it’s been largely pleasant to go to sleep in anticipation of seeing my father even if it’s just in my dreams. For those who don’t vivid dream, it feels like you’re wearing a VR headset while under the influence of some sort and trapped in a foggy, distant reality.
