Grief is like glitter.
I read somewhere recently. Grief is like glitter. I agreed. It will slip into the little cracks and crevices of your heart, deep and slow. Just like glitter, it would be painful to remove it completely, it would most likely never go away. But just like glitter, it is bound to shine beautifully eventually, now adorned with strength, under the quiet, but therapeutic healing light.
Grief is abstract to me. A lot of people associate it with mortal loss. But I associate it with loss of anything. Loss of naivety, adolescence, happiness, worth, love, tenderness, toughness, fragile connections i thought were tied forever.
Even the loss of the momentary warm sunlight on an otherwise biting cold morning fills me with a grief no coat could alleviate.
Even the loss of a singular raindrop swallowed by the concrete ground brings me a little grief. Maybe it wanted to stay more. Maybe it wanted to feel the Earth longer because it was it's first time touching something it had always known would be the cause of its evanescence.
The stronger losses are followed with fear, pain, agony, hate, longing, grieving, craving all at once. Or maybe none. Numbness, which is usually far more piercing than any of the others.
It is a cauldron of all these piercing and agonizing emotions and feelings, bubbling and simmering under the tender, weak walls of my heart.
Someday, it is bound to consume me and my flesh completely. Each cell burning, the fire spreading agonizingly slow across my flesh. But i could never bring myself to detest this melancholic, painful cauldron, because the pain is neutralized by the other cauldron. The one filled with the feelings of joy, contentment and gratitude to the brim, fondly threatening to spill out. The one which makes me cherish what exists, stopping me from spiraling over what i lose.
Both of them existing simultaneously, it creates a wonderful chemistry, in my thoughts. A reaction under unfavorable conditions, proceeding with the slow pace of this miniscule, mundane life under the effect of catalyst called healing.
Could the reactants of this reaction be the painful, piercing glitter particles called grief? They could disintegrate into smaller, softer particles over time as gratitude, because i considered it precious enough to grieve? That I am not numb but feelings bloom in the crevices of my body. Maybe that's the deepest things we humans are capable of. To think. To feel. To grieve. Perhaps, we should sometimes feel gratitude just for feeling, because it requires a deep void to fill in the emotions, which not everyone can make space for.
Despite the smaller size, i think disintegrated particles would glitter significantly more, for they have found joy.