Remember This

These past few days have been hard. My sleep schedule is completely messed up. My mood shifts with the wind. My appetite isn’t great. Saturday I stayed in bed all day, aside from a one hour Pilates class that would usually make me feel better. It didn’t.

Before I get too dramatic - don’t worry - I’m okay. Truly. I’m not about to shave my head or start dressing my cats like people. Not yet, anyway.

Of course, during times like this - whatever “this” means - it’s normal to feel out of sorts. Or, at least that’s what everyone is saying. It’s hard to know what to feel in times like these because there’s never been a time like this.

My godmother sent me a podcast that talked a lot about grief. It talked about how all this mess of emotions that we’re all feeling really does come down to grief, but we’re going through many of the stages all at once, for different things. We’re grieving our normal lives, and all that goes with that. I have to admit, I can’t help feeling selfish for feeling grief at all because I still have so much good. In comparison to what other’s are going through, I’m just a tiny blip on the radar. Is it fair for me to grieve? Do I have the right to grieve the loss of plans I was looking forward to, when someone else has lost a father?

I don’t really know about the fairness of it, but I’m starting to understand the necessity of it. In the podcast, it was said that the most important grief is the one that you’re feeling, and that helped me. You can’t compare grief and it’s important to let yourself feel how you need to feel outside of a comparative lens. However, what’s harder now, I think, is that it’s so obviously happening. It feels slow and tedious. I’m so cognizant of it. It doesn’t feel natural, and it doesn’t even feel the same everyday.

Sometimes, when I’m feeling upset or lonely or nostalgic, I look through all of my photos from my backpacking trip. The memories take me somewhere else, and remind me that I can always go. Except … right now … I can’t. I can’t go, and I don’t know when I will be able to. And travel, even when it returns, will never be the same as it was. Nothing will be exactly the same. Travel won’t be the same. Business won’t be the same. Gatherings won’t be the same. All of these things will be okay or maybe even better - but they won’t be the same. Not knowing that that looks like is probably the scariest and hardest part. C.S. Lewis once said “No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear.”

How do you grieve something when you don’t know the final outcome? It’s scary.

Today as I was scrolling, I came across a picture of the Prague Castle. The picture isn’t particularly good. Actually, it’s horrible - grainy and out of scope. But it’s not about the picture. When I snapped that photo on my trusty, dusty iPhone 6 (RIP), I forced a memory. I forced a memory by purposefully trying to solidify it my mind. I don’t know if that makes sense or if this is something that other people do, but as I looked up, neck fully titled just to see the top of the castle, I thought to myself “Alex, remember this. Remember this exact moment. Remember exactly this, here, now. You’re so small and yet so insanely connected. You’ve dreamed of this, and now you’re here. Don’t forget it. Remember this.” And I do. I don’t remember what I was wearing, or exactly where I went after I left the castle, but I remember the weight of my feet planted firmly on the uneven stones. I remember the wind blowing in my hair, and I remember being completely shielded in the castle’s shadow. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly why I wanted to hold onto that moment so bad. I was too overwhelmed, but I just knew for whatever reason, I wanted to grasp onto it. Looking at the image now, I understand more of what I was feeling: awe at the magnitude, both the physical size and its history - of all that the castle had been through to still be standing there and also pride for all that I’d been through to get myself there. I remember smiling and, saying out loud like a crazy person, “Remember this, please.”

As I sit here now, struggling to tie all these thoughts together, it’s a nice memory to grab onto. I know that I feel that way again - awed, inspired, limitless.

But right now, I have to feel like this. I have to feel this grief, because it’s important. Because it’s teaching me. Hard lessons, but lessons nonetheless. All this grief and accompanying emotions are allowing me to learn and appreciate and, one day, I’ll be able to look back and really see clearly what it’s taught me. Maybe not as clearly as a picture, but, you get the point.

Remember this.