WHY DO I FEEL LIKE I’M GRIEVING WHEN NO ONE HAS DIED?

A stream of consciousness exploration into the current state of my spirit

I’m walking around inside of this metaphysical shop, dysregulated and worn of spirit. On the verge of tears that I continue to hold back because… well, this is literally my place of work. I’m a psychic here. This is my shift. At any given moment, someone might call for a reading. And me, you ask? Well… I’m currently tightrope walking on the straw that broke the camel's spiritual back.

This is not the type of job that requires strategy and cunning at the forefront—I’m not a mental gladiator here. But it does require a large heaping of heart to do readings ethically and responsibly…and today I feel like my heart is broken. Over what? I have yet to discern fully—but I intend to by the end of this entry.

And while it is a store, honestly, this isn’t even a job that requires my composure or customer service. See I’m not afraid of crying or performing appropriate amounts of “professionalism” to be excellent at what I do here (…not that that has ever stopped me from crying at work 🙃).

People come to see me or call in so I can tell them “the future”, help unravel a spiritual knot, connect to something bigger than themselves, or even just for clarity on… well, *gestures wildly at LITERALLY everything*.

Here, my work is SPIRIT forward. I greet you with my soul, we meet for 15–30 minutes as “strangers,” and leave having unpacked and repacked your deepest pains, your core wounds, the things that need healing but have never had safe space. And that’s it. Maybe we encounter each other again some day—but often not.

And you know, I realize that I’ve always been a soul worker. Before I was old enough to legally work, my spirit was already on the clock. Ironically, I probably clocked in before I could even SPELL “clock”…

And so now, I’m sitting here at this store, mentally burnt out, heartbroken, and spiritually connected AND disconnected at the same time. I wander outside my little reading room into the merchandise to see if something intuitively calls to me—to help me regulate, heal, or understand. An intuitive reading for myself from the Universe, basically.

And I’m led to the books.

And the “Grief” section.

I don’t exactly know why, because while I can identify feelings of deep soul sadness, I can’t pinpoint what exactly I’d even be grieving.

The first three books I picked up in the section were put back down because they were focused on grieving death and people who have passed on. I have been fortunate to not have been faced with many people dying close to me during my lifetime, so this feels…not quite resonant.

Then as I’m about to move on, I see a little book that is titled “From Grief to Healing: A Holistic Guide to Rebuilding Mind, Body & Spirit After Loss.” And that is it.

I realize that I am experiencing GRIEF.

I AM grieving.

I’m grieving happiness that I’ve never quite grasped.

I’m grieving the death of freedom from traumas that I never asked for.

I’m grieving the stab wounds that came from a friend or lover in the middle of a trusted embrace.

I’m grieving a feeling of home that I can only fathom, but not recall physically.

I grieve the decisions of others that were never mine to make, but the pain ripples still disrupted my personal safety in close proximity.

I grieve for the part of me that—even now—tries to soothe me so that I can finish this shift. Who picked out that book/resource. A hopeful solution, because bless her heart, she is a survivor and a problem solver used to licking her own wounds.

I grieve in stifled sobs because those around me are already wearing their grief on the outside, and it feels inconsiderate to cry when someone else is clearly having a worse day and has called dibs on the empathy for the day.

I’m grieving for the ways I have been oppressed and violated when I was naturally loving and giving. For the things that were taken when a simple, respectful request would have sufficed—and even then, I still held the right to say no.

I grieve for the psychic/healer part of me that wants to just break down—and simultaneously sees the bigger picture/higher purpose. I feel sad for her, that this whole process is so convoluted… especially when your third eye is open.

I grieve for the amounts of forgiveness I have had to dole out without anyone even realizing a “sorry” was in order.

I’m grieving for the girl who feels left alone out here so frequently, wondering why the universe even brought her here if there wasn’t enough space for her. For her needs. For her dreams. Not even for her tears—to express the devastation of that truth.

I grieve for my connection to the Divine—my faith. What it was before it was tarnished and stomped on. But simultaneously, I am more connected than ever before. And that tarnished stump was somehow compressed into something even more solid and concentrated in its power. So, though that is a good thing in the long run, I guess it still makes me sad when I look at its journey to get here.

Grief is tied to loss, which we often equate to physical deaths. But death is not as finite as we make it—rather, death is a concept that occurs on all levels of existence. Deaths are transitions. Change. The leaving of one thing and the space for something else to emerge.

Deaths happen in leaving where we call home. Deaths happen in lost dreams and rerouted paths. Deaths happen to previous versions of ourselves and previous versions of people we know (or knew) as we grow in different directions. Deaths happen after betrayals and heartbreaks. Deaths happen when the unexpected rattles our comfort zones. Deaths happen in our worldview, when something blindsides you with a devastating, mind-altering truth that you can no longer ignore. Deaths happen in our faith and our connection to God and others.

If we think of death solely as physical funerals, we are sure to be blindsided by how much death exists around us on every level. And in some way, even saying the word “death” so many times now has made it lose some of its potency—it starts sounding like a made-up word. It’s less scary, and more abstract.

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In tarot, the Death card symbolizes big change, transformation, release, and endings that must occur in order to begin again—not optional, but enduring.

In the show Charmed, the eldest sister, Prue, meets the Angel of Death and mistakes him for evil because of his function and the early death of her mother. For this, she wishes to destroy it—but, through the episode, she realizes that she cannot actually fight it or defeat it or change it. In doing so, she admits that she has been angry at it because she didn’t know what else to be or how to accept it.

And the Angel of Death tells her to grieve.

“I’m not good or evil. I just am. I’m inevitable,” he says. And that is perhaps the point.

I haven’t faced recent physical death—but I’ve lived through endless, quieter ones. And there is a certain level of bliss in the ignorance of only acknowledging physical deaths, like many do. But I have to grieve constantly. And “to grieve” feels synonymous with “being alive” for me at this point.

But in a world where many of my funerals are only acknowledged or attended by me, it feels inexpressible and lonely.

How can I bring my loss to the table at a time when people are without food? When others have just lost a loved one? When people are literally in war zones?

So, I just don’t bring them to the table. I find ways to smile and shift my perspective toward gratitude since I seem to be in closer proximity to it—at least from what people can see. But I am grieving. And I have never stopped.

Grieving is the process of letting go. Loss happens regardless of if we give ourselves the space to grieve and let go anyway. Some things may have been forcefully transitioned out of our lives, yet find ourselves still gripping at its ghost years later.

I guess that is the answer. I need to let go. And to purge from so many funerals that I held in silence for all of these years in order not to bother anyone.

But my silent sobs were not enough to release them. Now it sits here in my echo chamber full of still water.