I know many of my writings touch on what it feels to interact with the world – people I know, people I don’t know – as a person who is grieving. I write about how people ask how I am – sometimes with genuine concern, but other times just as part of casual conversation. I’ve written about how often I slip into the mode of least resistance where my answers to that question are not untruthful, but also do not reveal much or invite further questions – think answers like “hanging in there”, “okay, all things considering”, “could be worse”, or deflective answers like “glad it’s Friday”, “ready for the weekend”. I don’t lie, but I don’t open myself up, either.
Life was so much easier when “How are you doing?” didn’t require complex mental calculations to answer. I miss when things were simpler, the time before. I missing being able to enthusiastically answer that question – whether talking about challenges I was facing, or happy events I was eager to share.
Honestly, most of the time, I don’t really know how to answer the question. It’s not that I don’t want to be open with people, but despite all the words I write here, it’s so hard to put words to my grief in day to day conversation. My existence feels heavy now – I am not the same person that I was before, and I don’t expect that I ever will be.
I don’t know how to incorporate this weight and the reality of my new life into conversations. I’ve always been better in writing – I prefer questions via email so much over phone calls because it gives me the ability to think and process and really form my response, which isn’t something I have in real-time conversation.
And then there’s the fact that sometimes I just don’t have the energy to engage with my grief beyond a superficial level in day to day conversation with other people. There’s a reason why most of my blog posts end up being published either at night or over the weekends, times I can really dig deep and not worry about splitting my energy between the wider world and my grief. This grief that I carry siphons off energy all throughout the day, and if I am going to function – work, talk, use my brain to be productive… I have to try and manage how and when I purposefully let my grief out and truly engage with it, because when I do it tends to leave me feeling like I went through a spin cycle in the washer.
If you ask me how I am, and you get a generic/safe answer, please don’t take it personally. If you want to talk with me about my grief, I would encourage you to ask specific questions. The more generic the question I get, the harder it is to decide how to answer, which is why I typically default to the easier and safer answers to those questions. “How are you?” is probably the most general of all – what are you really asking, do you really want to know how I’m doing? If you ask specific questions, then if I have the energy and ability to engage in my grief with you at that time, I will.