good grief Boy Next Door
good grief Boy Next Door, we were so young and knew so little. They told us love was supposed to be a game of chase. At first I thought that sounded exciting, but exciting can be just another word for unpredictable.
good grief Boy Next Door, so I guess not everyone was charmed by our “kids next door” love story. A friend once told me, “if you’re not happy, you can leave,” and once I knew the charade was over I had to deal with making the choice to leave or know I had chosen to stay.
good grief Boy Next Door, the first time you pushed me a friend saw it happen. She asked if it had happened before. I said “no,” and I wasn’t lying that time.
good grief Boy Next Door, it took a 17 hour flight, a new country, and an escape from the winter to see things differently. When I got a whole hemisphere’s worth of perspective, I could start to imagine a future beyond you.
good grief Boy Next Door, dating you was like trying to finish a puzzle by force. Eventually I realized our pieces didn’t fit together even though we thought we were working off of the same picture.
good grief Boy Next Door, I would go to parties after we broke up and not feel myself there. Turns out you could still haunt me even when we weren’t together.
good grief Boy Next Door, it seems anti-feminist to grieve a relationship that hurt me this much. Untinged anger was simpler for so long.
good grief, Boy Next Door, is valuing stability for what it is instead of relying on it as a middle class given. We have to do better because our story isn’t all that uncommon.
good grief, Boy Next Door, is throwing out the euphemisms of “toxic” and “unhealthy” to label our relationship for what it was: abusive.
good grief, Boy Next Door, is collecting the echoes of voices on a playlist who spoke my mantra: “it is ok to be mad.” I played the same songs on repeat for a year.
good grief, Boy Next Door, is trusting the salt and sun when it told me to leave the Atlantic ocean between us.
good grief, Boy Next Door, is continuing to show up in places I know you’ll be. Our mutual friends and the history we have growing up means more to me than a few side glances.
good grief, Boy Next Door, is hearing my new partner tell me that love doesn’t have to be so scary. It’s not easier than what we had, I just don’t have to make excuses anymore.
good grief, Boy Next Door, is remembering my grad school teacher telling us, “all change is loss.” Even if it’s good change, change for the better, there can still be sadness.
each good grief participant was given the opportunity to contribute something to the project
see below for this participant’s contribution
Reflections on Anger in Grief
When we think of grief, often the feeling we associate with it is sadness, depression. For me, I could not move along in my grieving process because I was stunted in anger. I was angry with my ex, I was angry at others around me, I was angry with myself. There was a build up of anger inside of me and it felt like there was no place for it to go, which was causing me anxiety and pain.
As women, expressing anger is not encouraged or accepted the same way it is in our male peers. We often don’t know how to work through our anger because we’re not allowed to be angry starting early on. Growing up I was told I had an attitude by more than one adult. I was called a smart ass. And I’m not denying that I was a smart ass because I was but I never felt like I was given really clear alternatives for how to be mad.
This relationship I was grieving forced me into finding a way to process my anger. I made a playlist of songs sung by women who were expressing their anger in loud ways or expressing it in general. I spent months slowly adding to it. It sort of happened on accident. I didn’t go out and intentionally make it but I realized one day that there was a pattern to the songs I was gravitating towards and put it together that I should put all these songs in one place. I listened to this playlist in the car over and over again and I would blast the music and sing loudly, releasing all the anger. It was not uncommon for me to end up in tears from the release.
I didn’t listen to this once, I listened over and over again. And some of the songs will still make me cry to this day. That’s how grieving is, it takes repetition to work through something, and it never fully goes away or decreases but we learn to grow and expand around it.
Here’s a small snippet of songs on that (somewhat corny) playlist in case it inspires someone else:
1. Listen by Beyoncé
2. Not Ready To Make Nice by The Chicks
3. Forever and Almost Always by Kate Voegele
4. You Oughta Know by Alanis Morissette
5. And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going (Jennifer Hudson’s version)