I guess I am lucky. When I was growing up, I had a lot of women that dropped bars into my life as to how to conduct myself as a young woman. A teacher in middle school, Ms. Ross, told me to never leave home without a pantyliner in my purse. My grandma told me that clear nail polish stops runs in your stockings. My middle school bus driver told me that hand soap from the soap dispenser in the ladies room can double as a deodorant if you put it under your arms, and my mom told me that table salt gets period blood out of your underwear. One of the editors at Upscale Magazine, where I interned after college, told me that potato chips and sugary snacks will give you parasites. All facts. However, while all these priceless pieces of information were being dished out, no one told me how to deal with loss. Inevitable, random loss. Someone dying in your life is way more plausible then you randomly needing a pantyliner. It is guaranteed! Yet no one said a peep.
Over the past two years, my grandma has died, my mom has died and my ex-boyfriend from high school has died. Most recently, one of my BESTEST friends from college died, and I just feel ill-equipped as to how to deal with all of this loss emotionally. I find myself trying to sleep off the shock and hurt of it all, but how long of a nap do you have to take to get over the fact that there are people you've loved your life that are never coming back?
And it is not just death. I have also been mourning some of my friendships of late. People have friend-dumped me with no explanation, leaving just as big of a hole in my life as those people I loved that are now six feet under.
Perhaps the elders in my life didn't tell me how to deal with loss because it is almost impossible to put into words. Maybe they didn't tell me because they knew that grieving differs for everyone; what worked for them may not work for me. Either way, I don't have tools. Let's just file this under that grownup stuff that no one wants to address like heartbreak or student load debt. Man, if only dealing with loss could be as easy as cleaning period panties.
