It Was Never Only in My Head

Nobody warned me that grief would move into my body.

I thought sadness was something that happened in the mind. You think the heavy thoughts, you cry, and one day the thoughts get lighter. I was ready for that part. I was not ready for the rest.

I stopped eating. Not on purpose. Food simply stopped making sense. I would look at a plate and feel nothing, not hunger, not appetite, just a quiet refusal somewhere deep inside.

I slept, and slept, and slept. Twelve hours, sometimes more, and I woke up as tired as I had gone to bed. Tired in my bones. Tired in a way that sleep could not reach.

My head ached almost every day. My body changed: it became heavier, swollen, unfamiliar, as if it was holding on to everything I could not let go of. I looked in the mirror and did not quite recognize the woman there.

And the tears. They were not an event anymore. They were part of the day, like weather. They came in the morning, at work, in the car, at night.

People were the hardest. Not because I didn't love them, but because I had nothing left to give them. A simple conversation took everything I had. After one evening with people, I needed a whole week of silence to recover, like after a long illness.

For a long time I was ashamed of all this. I told myself I was weak. Other people go through terrible things and keep going. Why couldn't I just get up, eat properly, smile, call my friends back?

Then one evening I read a simple thought: grief doesn't stay in your head. It shows up in your sleep, your body, your energy. It is not weakness.

I read it several times. Something in me unclenched.

It was not that I was failing at grief. It was that grief was much bigger than I had been told.

It wasn't only in my thoughts. It was in my sleep, my stomach, my muscles, my face. My body was carrying it too, in the only way a body knows how.

I wish I could write that this is all in the past. It isn't. I am still there. Slightly better, no doubt. Some days I am hungry again. Some mornings I wake up and the tiredness is a little lighter. Some weeks I need fewer days of silence after people.

But I am still there.

What has changed is how I speak to myself about it. I no longer call it weakness. When my body is tired, I let it rest without asking it to explain itself. When the tears come, I let them. When I need silence after people, I take it, and I stop apologizing for it.

I don't know how long a body takes to put down what it has been carrying. Maybe longer than I would like. But I have decided to be patient with it, the way I would be patient with someone I love.

And there is one more thing I have learned to admit.

On the worst days, I don't need anyone to fix anything. I know nothing will change because someone listened. And still, I want someone to know. To know how bad it really is. Not the polite version, not "I'm fine, just tired". The real one.

Maybe that is why I write here.

My body has carried me this far. The least I can do is stop blaming it, and stop hiding how heavy it has been.

If you are still there too, would you tell me how it is for you? It won't change everything. But someone will know.

With love, from HerWay

If this story touched you

So What If It HurtsBy My Own Free Will

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