My recent days have been taken over by grief, I have been so suffocatingly ill with it. The loss of my lizard has brought me pain like none other before it. To grieve someone you love so dearly is the worst feeling in the world, and it can feel like no one around you truly knows what you’re going through. I have written this article as a coping mechanism, in an effort to pull myself out of my pain, and bring light to others. My leopard gecko, Janice, meant the world to me, she was my everything. My world collapsed when she went away but that does not mean that I can’t rebuild it in her memory.
There are five known stages of grief. Denial, in which you struggle to recognize that you’ve experienced a loss. Anger, when you are angry at anything and everything you can blame for your loss. Bargaining, which is trying to get a hold of the situation and control it. Suppression forces your emotions back down inside of you instead of letting you process them. Finally, there is acceptance. In the acceptance stage, you acknowledge your loss and finally begin to move forward. As a non-professional, unqualified teenager who’s recently experienced a loss, these are my tips for trying to get better:
- Stand Up
Laying in bed is not going to bring your lizard back. Take a shower; cleaning your body is important, for you must show yourself love in times of hardship. You must eat food to nourish yourself so you don’t end up feeling worse. It is okay to allow your feelings to flow; crying in your bed for three days straight is necessary for healing, but you must stand up eventually.
- Express Yourself / Be Angry
Write about it, because writing helps. Whether it be organized journaling, a feature article, a guilt-ridden text message, or a thought spiral on paper, it can be therapeutic. You could also try screaming into the void. Expressing your feelings is one of the most important things for you to do. You are allowed to be angry — you can be so mad at the universe for doing this to you or (if applicable) at the people involved. Though you cannot fight them — you have to be responsible — you are allowed to hate them and not feel guilty about it.
- Socialize
Connect with people, please. If you do not talk about it the pain will never leave you. Call your friend (or text if you can’t get the shaky cry out of your voice). Give yourself time to recover. If you need to keep your friend awake until almost 11 p.m. because it helps you, you don’t need to feel guilty about that either, because your friends want to help you.
- Do Stuff
Go for a walk; committing to an activity will release endorphins and take your mind somewhere else. You can relax by playing a video game or reading a book. Do something meditative like lighting a candle and closing your eyes, or pulling out your dust-coated coloring book from childhood and buy yourself a box of crayons. Ride your bike or go to the gym if those things are available for you.
- Don’t Let The Guilt Eat You Alive
You are allowed to get better; you are not a bad person if you get better. Your loved one(s) is not upset that you moved forward, they are happy for you. They never wanted to hold you back. You must get better not in spite of them but because of them, because they want you to get better. It is easier said than done; it is so easy to never leave your bed and to cry about your lizard until the end of time, but you need to get up. The guilt can be so heavy, but you need to sit up and force it off of you, lift that weight from your chest. It is okay, it is okay, it is okay, it is okay. You are allowed to get better because you have to.
In my experience, grief has been the most overwhelming feeling to endure. Love is so rare, and it feels awful when it goes away, not only to lose someone you loved but to lose someone who loved you. No one person has loved me as much as my lizard and I am so angry that I don’t get her love anymore. However, we can move forward because their love never actually leaves, it just becomes further away. Grief knows no mercy, so you must be stronger than it, you must breathe again.
