For starters, losing a person that you love is traumatizing. Not only mentally traumatizing but you feel it in your body too. You can feel the pain walk around with you around campus, you can feel the weight of the pain throughout your entire body while you're trying to sleep, but you feel it the most when you're alone. There isn't any way to make it go away.
I've learned a lot these past three months, more than I have learned in my entire life. Here are those things:
You'll think about them every day.
My dad always told me there isn't a day that goes by that he didn't think about his dad. I always thought that was a lie. My young mind jumped from topic to topic on the daily and I never thought it was possible for someone's mind to slow down and think about one person every day. But it's 100% true. Thing after thing will remind you of them and it comes at the most random times.
No matter how many tears you shed, you won't feel better.
Normally I'm pretty emotional and cry all the time, even over a bad grade on a homework assignment. Now I feel numb, I don't feel like I need to cry to let anything out. Every once in awhile I will choke up, but I quickly push it down and forget about it instantly. My dad used to say, "Crying is the best medicine." I just don't feel it anymore.
Cherish life everyday.
I've learned not to take my life for granted. I try to spend all my time on my top priorities, because anything can happen in a blink of an eye. This is why I spend all my time with my mom the most and I wouldn't change that for anything life will ever offer me. I know my dad would want that.
Hug your loved ones tighter.
Every time I leave a place or if my loved ones leave, I ALWAYS hug them and tell them I love them. You'll never know when it's your last time seeing them.
Just how much I owe God.
I've learned so much about my faith and my spiritual life during this time. It truly amazes me what God has done for me, I was angry at first. I still am, but I am working on becoming truly happy. That might take a couple years but I've learned to let Jesus take control of my life and that everything happens for a reason.
Who the consistent people in your life are.
After about one month people stopped checking in on me. They stopped asking if I was okay. If someone did ask if I was okay it was always one of my mom's friends. I don't blame my friends for not asking if I'm okay, most of them haven't experienced pain like this before and I don't ever want them to. I'm a big people person and I've never felt more isolated in my life.
Nothing is more valuable than someone's life.
I've stopped caring about how I did on homework assignments, test and quizzes. There's nothing I can do to get that specific grade up, just like there's nothing I can do to get him back. I've vowed to myself to stop being a materialistic person because the most important thing/person was my dad.
Being alone sucks.
Being alone = thinking too much. Once I start thinking, I lose my mind and I lose my cool.
The respect I have for my mom.
I've always known she's the best mom on the entire planet. But this experience has shaken us so much and I thought we were never going to recover from it, we still haven't recovered. She proves me wrong every single day, there is always something she does that I don't think I can ever do after my significant other passes. She's the strongest person I know and I will always look up to her for the rest of my life.
I still think I'm not going to get through this, of course I have doubts. But this has been the best learning experience I have ever had.
