On holding on too tight

I’ve always found a sense of comfort in grief. I lean towards the gothic, the wretched, the darker corners of human emotion. There’s something about the suspension of time that enamours me. It’s an escape I yearn for. That sacred place in the gap between the present and the past where you hide so that you don’t have to make a future. You dangle precariously, content to have nothing so that you do not lose more.

The first representation of grief that stuck in my chest like a thorn was Miss Havisham. I was 15 or so when I read Great Expectations and I was fascinated. It took me so many attempts to finish the book, always getting snagged on that imagery of her perpetual bridehood. Her grief dressed up in white lace, a denial of the colour of mourning.

The stopped clocks and the memorialised wedding cake, left to rot, are comforting in their morbidity. The avoidance of a hard truth; that which was is now no longer. It never will be again. It’s a desperate attempt to control the world that’s spinning out in her hands. To clutch it with her bony knuckles until her palms start to sweat. I think I’ve done something similar.

“It was then I began to understand that everything in the room had stopped, like the watch and the clock, a long time ago. I noticed that Miss Havisham put down the jewel exactly on the spot from which she had taken it up. As Estella dealt the cards, I glanced at the dressing-table again, and saw that the shoe upon it, once white, now yellow, had never been worn. I glanced down at the foot from which the shoe was absent, and saw that the silk stocking on it, once white, now yellow, had been trodden ragged. Without this arrest of everything, this standing still of all the pale decayed objects, not even the withered bridal dress on the collapsed form could have looked so like grave-clothes, or the long veil so like a shroud.”

- Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

I was 13 years old when my grandad died. I remember little of the grieving process aside from yelling at my dad and feeling sick with guilt that I had somehow caused it. On the morning of his funeral I stood in front of the full length mirror applying and re-applying mascara. I took it off and tried again. I combed through the lashes to extract the lumps. Agonised over the length and whether it was too thick.

I dragged my hands through my hair, chewed fingernails snagging. Undecided. Curly or straight? I spent hours standing still while the house woke with dread around me. Preparing. Moving forwards. Up the stairs and down the stairs while I stood still.

I was thirteen and still not familiar enough with makeup to wear it every day. I didn’t have a routine. It was a ritual. My mother stood impatiently behind me, watching in the mirror in her matching black dress. Her arms were folded, restraining the urge to hurry me along. Her dad was gone and my mascara was sacred.

I stood in the mirror until she eventually steered me away. her fingers dug like claws into the flesh of my shoulders, moving me down the stairs. I remember my resistance. But we had places to be. The journey there was silent, and I remember spending it concerned that I was shallow. I suppose that was selfish in itself. I had woken up on the morning of the first funeral I would attend, fixated not on the grief and instead on the face I wore into the church. It was a special kind of vanity I had stooped to, crouching low with my knees in the dirt. Did I not realise the gravity of the situation? Did I not care? Guilt twisted in my stomach when I realised I was watching my younger cousins with jealousy. It didn’t matter that they had had less time with our grandad. Fewer stories to cling to. It mattered that they didn’t understand. They played in the garden and made our relatives smile with their anecdotes. Grandad is with the angels now, they would repeat. It made me sick.

I stood with a glass of lemonade and my cardigan wrapped around my black dress. Taking it off and putting it on again. Reapplying my lip balm. Tying my hair up. My granny was crying and I was watching myself in every reflective surface. I was a girl gone mad.

I dressed myself up like a mannequin, standing still in the window. Determined not to move, resisting the instinct to grow. Leaving the freezeframe would be to forget his laugh or his goodnight kisses. If I stayed in the past I would be with him forever. But the time wouldn’t let me and the ground fell out from under my feet. I was spinning out and the only thing I could hold onto was my lip balm, wrapped in my sweaty palm in the pocket of my funeral dress.

That madness creeps back in from time to time. I find myself in a particular kind of frenzy when I fixate on how I look. I pace angrily from room to room, bare feet on the carpet. Nothing looks the way it should and everything is ugly and uncomfortable. I hate my wardrobe. My makeup isn’t working. My hair is dull. My body heats with a particular rage that comes with my appearance not matching the version that resides in my head, where I can control it.

I had come to accept these feverish episodes, if we can call them that. After all, I could be doing a lot worse. In fact, there’s room for romanticism; a young woman finds herself pacing her bedroom floor in her underwear, face hot with stress and fabric pouring off her bed. She has nothing to wear. It’s a coming of age, a rite of passage. You’re a woman now, the protagonist of a movie. The opening sequence of a life unfolding. *Cue ‘Suddenly I see’ by KT Tunstall*.

For the first time in a while, I’ve found myself in that frenzy again. A spiral of vitriol that has me spitting at the mirror. The dresses I have are just not right. Too puffy. Too tight. Too baggy. Too long. Too shiny. Not shiny enough. Nothing is perfect and everything is awful.

Again, I hadn’t thought anything of it. Why would I? Graduation is an important day. The photos will hang proudly on the wall of my parents’ houses. I’ll be forever memorialised in whichever dress I choose. It’s a big decision. A panic that stings me from the inside out. I’m irritable and unpleasant. It bleeds into everything. Of course I’m worried about what I’ll wear. Like Miss Havisham, it will be the dress that marks my peak. The end of a life that begs to escape me, despite my strongest grip.

After another disappointing try-on and a vicious tugging of the fabric, I put myself in timeout. I made myself a tea and went straight to Substack, naturally, forcing myself to take a step back. To stop agonising over the dresses and accept that nothing will be perfect on a day you don’t want to happen. No amount of pretty can cover up how miserable you are.

That became apparent when, during my timeout, I was scrolling on tiktok. What I hoped would be a mind numbing distraction became all too real when I came across a video that read ‘actually I’m not ready to graduate’ and promptly burst into tears. It rolled out of me unexpectedly. I opened my mouth and out poured waves of grief, flowing too fast for me to control. Out of me spilled the last glimpse of control I have over a world that is spinning out under my feet. The last shred of dignity in a world that is transforming and dying at my feet.

I realised quickly that it was never about the dress.

I’ve always had trouble letting go of things. Especially when I don’t get to choose. When things are leaving my life and I have no power in it, no matter how tightly I hold on. Like Miss Havisham, I would be content to rot in place for fear of the future and the past I have to abandon.

I exist in a fourth space, outside of the past, present and future. Suspended in the empty space between where nothing is lost and nothing is gained. Where joy is absent but so is grief.

This year in particular has been one of letting go, despite my best efforts. I let go of homes, of people, of places I thought would last forever. It’s fitting that this post came to me on a new moon. A new phase of life means shedding the old and I’m never mad at the changes, at the progress, but I want so desperately to collect instead of lose.

I wish that each new experience could join the shelf and come home to all of the others that I get to live simultaneously. I wish that I didn’t have to close a door in order to find the key to a new one.

The loss of every person from my life aches like a rotten cavity. An empty space that I try not to poke in the hope that it will heal. It stays forever vacant; I make space for newness by cutting off pieces of myself. I forever hold open their spot. A foot in the door that would grant them access straight to my chest. Maybe I should learn to lock it but I can never bring myself to.

I hold on until my knuckles burst through the skin stretched over them. I hold affection on my tongue until it sours and I swallow it, letting it poison me from the inside out. I should learn to leave when I’m still a lamb, soft and shaky on my knees. Instead I let it rot and I feel myself harden. I’m a wolf with yellowing fur and bloodshot eyes. Teeth sharpened by the blows and still I never learn. I swing untethered from extreme to extreme. My heart is soft and fleshy. Young and red. I let them hold it in their vice and squeeze it dry until a stone sits in their palm. I let go only when they pry my fingers away, bending them backwards until they snap.

I choose to believe I’m lucky. My heart is strong enough to love the people that beat it black and blue. To hold on even when they grow thorns. I just wish it wouldn’t. I wish I could save it all and pour it into the people that hold it gently. That tell it ‘I love you’ often enough for the girl it lives inside to believe it.

I’m lucky to have things to cling so tightly to. I’m lucky that my present is so fulfilling that I grieve it while I live it. I resist the urge to dig my claws in and I let it pass, silk through my fingertips. My hands have been aching for too long. I soften my grip and smile softly. I stay the lamb before I become the wolf.

I look forward to the next part with the fondness you hold for a stranger. They smile at you from a distance and you know you’ll be okay.

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