Linked Grief & Exhaustion

Moments like this are what sometimes make it hard to want to keep going.

I have linked grief. One area of grief triggers another, and suddenly it isn’t just one loss I’m feeling. It’s all of them.

I have experienced a lot of loss over the past three years. Some of it expected. Some of it sudden. Some of it entirely my own doing. None of it feels fully resolved.

One memory brushes against another. One goodbye wakes up ten more. One ache reminds me of every other ache I’ve been carrying.

At the same time, there are a lot of changes happening in my life that feel unpredictable, and unpredictability has never been easy for me.

I’m trying to let myself feel it instead of fighting it. I’m trying to trust that it will pass. But some days the pain feels so large that it becomes difficult to navigate alone.

I think the hardest part is knowing every loss feels like it was my own fault.

That because I played a role in these endings, I don’t always feel entitled to grieve them.

There are people in this world carrying burdens far heavier than mine, and its hard not to feel like

I should toughen up and just get over it.

But I know that’s not how it works.

Someone else’s suffering does not erase my own. And self-criticism has never succeeded in making grief leave faster.

I’m trying to acknowledge that carrying years of accumulated loss is exhausting.

And I’m trying to trust that this wave, like every wave before it, will eventually recede.