The Mask I Wear: Grief, Growth, and a Lasting Gift

Preface: I am not very good at sharing personal stuff and this subject has been particularly difficult for me to talk about. I am sharing this as part of my grieving process and because I want to honor someone who was very special to me. I want to remember them for the good times that we had and pay tribute to her in the only way that I really know how.

The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to.

- Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler

My life has not been an easy one but in 2021 I found myself head-over-heals for a woman, named Jen, who had been extremely supportive and understanding of the struggles that I had been through in my life.
Jen and I were friends for more than a decade before we started dating, and I was able to confide in her years before we took the next step in our relationship.

Jen was able to help me through some of the darkest times in my life and was able to provide me with the support and love that I needed to keep going.
She was someone that I could talk to about anything, and she was someone that I could rely on when I needed help. I am grateful that she was there for me, and I am grateful for the time we had together before she passed away last July.

Nearly nine months have gone by now and I am still grieving her loss, and I am still trying to come to terms with the fact that she is gone. It is difficult to lose someone who was such an important part of my life, and it is difficult, even still, to imagine a future without her in it.
However I am trying to focus on the good times that we had together, and the love that we shared. I am trying to find ways to honor her memory and keep her spirit alive in my heart.

Jen was a kind, and caring, person who genuinely wanted to see people be their best self. She would have given the shirt off her back to help her friends and her desire to improve the lives of the people that she met knew absolutely no bounds.

After she passed away I had found so many cards which she had received from others whom she also wrote cards to. She had this amazing ability to connect with so many different people and many people around the country had written cards to her thanking her, wishing her well, and even just wishing her a happy holiday or birthday.
I still hold on to every card that she'd ever sent to me and she always found just the right words to write even if she didn't know what to say. The cards that she sent were very thoughtful because that's just the kind of person that she was, thoughtful.

When she found me I was in a dark place which she pulled me up out of, and when I lost her I lost my best friend. It is difficult to imagine finding someone else who I could connect with on that level again, and I know that nobody will ever be able to take her place in my heart.
Losing her has been a battle to keep myself from going right back into that dark place.

A celebration of her life was held on her birthday, she would have been 32 years old. When I attended I felt like I was forcing myself to talk to people, to pretend to be somewhat okay, but I wasn't. I still am not okay. I just wear the mask better today than I did yesterday and the days before that.
Truth be told how do you really recover from something like this? I can only take it one day at a time.

When I think about the future, I am filled with a mix of hope and fear. I am hopeful that I will be able to find happiness and fulfillment in my life again, but I am also afraid of the pain and loss that I have experienced in the past, and I am afraid of the possibility of experiencing it again.
I am trying to stay positive. I'm trying to focus on the things that I can control and to not dwell on the things which I cannot.

I have been through a lot of ups and downs in my life, and during our time together I have learned a lot about myself and the world around me. I have learned to be resilient and to keep going even when things get tough, and I have learned to appreciate the good times and the people who are there with me for them.
I have also learned to be more understanding and compassionate towards others, and to be more mindful of the impact that my words and actions can have on others.
  The truth is that I didn't feel like I was all that great of a person before I met her. I spent my time with her trying to find, within myself, whatever it was that she saw in me.
She taught me how to be my best self and that's the gift that she left with me. I feel like it's my job not to give that up and go back to being anything less than the person she knew I can be. I feel as if to not continue making progress on the path that she set me on would be to dishonor her gift to me before she left this world.

In October, after I passed my exam for certification in Cyber Security I broke down in tears. She watched me study for months as I chipped away at each part of my course material. She believed in me and knew that I could do it.
She helped me with flash cards and provided so much encouragement! So when I passed the exam I thought about how happy she would have been for me and I cried until there was nothing left to cry.

As of right now I have applied to college and I am hoping to be accepted for the Spring so that I can continue to further my education because I know that she wouldn't want me to give up when times are hard. She was a fighter and she would have encouraged me to keep going and stick to it.
I also know that somehow she will be there with me every step of the way because a really great person said that she is gone from our sight, but never from our hearts.

Rest in piece mi amor. Te amaré hasta el día que muera.