Life.. As I Thought I Knew
You ever think you know things and then all of a sudden something happens that changes everything and I mean everything. Well in 2011, that's what happened for me, my life changed in a matter of seconds but I did not see how much this one event would effect me until months later.
June 7, 2011, we got the call my great grandmother Ira Mae Davis passed away; a phone call no one was expecting or truly wanted because that woman was the heart of my ENTIRE family. She passed away suddenly in her sleep and crazy thing her death brought forth a lot of mixed emotions amongst some, but for me it's when I realized I do not know how to grieve. Truly and honestly, I still have may days where I am still dealing with her death right now and she's been gone now for 7 years. I learned that I truly knew how to fake it in the moment, but I was internalizing all my feelings and emotions. I will never forget hyperventilating that day at my job and feeling like life was sucked out of me; but truly that's when my anxiety began.
That week was and uphill battle for me, I was expected to be the support system and the soloist; but no one realized I was terrified to walk in her house or that I was in fear I would have a panic attack when I saw her in the casket. I managed to make through the wake, but the night before the funeral the insomnia began. I couldn't close my eyes because I saw my granny's face and I wasn't ready to accept she was gone. I was numb when it came to singing at her funeral, I was numb for a few weeks actually until my mother's birthday and she wouldn't come out her room. See my mother was depressed because my granny died, her way of dealing was locking herself away; unlike me I was bottling it up inside and hiding from the truth. Not realizing that one day all the hurt, the anger, and the resentment was going to come spewing out causing me to go on a downward spiral of crazy.
My life changed forever that day and from then on, I was forced to face the facts that something was not right, but I did not know how. What I knew to do was play the double life role and pretend everything is okay, when deep inside all I wanted to do was die. I was forcing myself to act like I did not have issues or that something deeper wasn't wrong only to find myself 8 months later trying to find somewhere to live because all the anger in me started to surface......
What was I going to do? How was I going to survive?
-Jess Lore'al
June 7, 2011, we got the call my great grandmother Ira Mae Davis passed away; a phone call no one was expecting or truly wanted because that woman was the heart of my ENTIRE family. She passed away suddenly in her sleep and crazy thing her death brought forth a lot of mixed emotions amongst some, but for me it's when I realized I do not know how to grieve. Truly and honestly, I still have may days where I am still dealing with her death right now and she's been gone now for 7 years. I learned that I truly knew how to fake it in the moment, but I was internalizing all my feelings and emotions. I will never forget hyperventilating that day at my job and feeling like life was sucked out of me; but truly that's when my anxiety began.
That week was and uphill battle for me, I was expected to be the support system and the soloist; but no one realized I was terrified to walk in her house or that I was in fear I would have a panic attack when I saw her in the casket. I managed to make through the wake, but the night before the funeral the insomnia began. I couldn't close my eyes because I saw my granny's face and I wasn't ready to accept she was gone. I was numb when it came to singing at her funeral, I was numb for a few weeks actually until my mother's birthday and she wouldn't come out her room. See my mother was depressed because my granny died, her way of dealing was locking herself away; unlike me I was bottling it up inside and hiding from the truth. Not realizing that one day all the hurt, the anger, and the resentment was going to come spewing out causing me to go on a downward spiral of crazy.
My life changed forever that day and from then on, I was forced to face the facts that something was not right, but I did not know how. What I knew to do was play the double life role and pretend everything is okay, when deep inside all I wanted to do was die. I was forcing myself to act like I did not have issues or that something deeper wasn't wrong only to find myself 8 months later trying to find somewhere to live because all the anger in me started to surface......
What was I going to do? How was I going to survive?
-Jess Lore'al
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