First blog!

I never mentioned it last time, but my life's been a little eventful, too. You know, apart from the whole break up thing, no one ever really tells you about the friend breakups that come with it.

Now I knew to expect this, but I lost one of my friends. He meet me at a coffee shop to drop off some more stuff I left at the previous apartment, and the only reason that he came was because I told my ex I did not want them to be around me or contact me anymore. So he came to drop off some stuff from my ex that my ex still had at our old apartment.

It stung because I knew it was going to be the last time I would see him. I was hoping that maybe he'd want to hang out, or at least sit down and chat. But he came in the coffee shop, dropped off my stuff, and specifically told me he wouldn't be staying around. And it hurt! As with anyone, I know that if someone cared about my perspective then they would take the time to ask me. And it just kinda sucks that he took my ex's side because that means that he didn't care about my perspective. A loss for him, of course, but still hurtful.

When I was in IOP, I learned that you don't just grieve death. You can grieve other losses, too. So that's what I'm going through right now: Grief for losing my friendship with this one person.

I've gone through alot of grief: Grief from losing my family members, grief of losing my relationships with my family members, grief of moving from a home I didn't really want to move from. I've learned a lot from these experiences, so if you're also going through some kind of grief, here are some tips:

1) Let yourself feel your emotions.: Get off of your phone, get off the computer, stop watching TV. Allow yourself to sit with your thoughts. Allow yourself to sit with your emotions. And actually feel them. Feel them at the intensity they're at. Scream, cry, throw a tantrum, dance. Do whatever you need to let the big initial thoughts pass.
2) Find a new hobby.: After that initial big burst of emotions, you'll still find that you are still feeling some type of way about the grief, and that's where hobbies come into play. While you're experiencing that constant mini emotion, you'll need the distraction! Can be anything, something you've been wanting to do for a while, or just researching something that looks cool. Throw yourself into it as a way to both express your emotions in a healthy way and to distract yourself when the feelings get bad. But if the feelings get bad to the point of as they were initially, go back to just letting it all out as said in point one.
3) Recognize that your feelings won't last forever.: It may feel like you're deep in the pit, and you just might be! But what you gotta recognize is that feelings don't last forever, and that goes for every emotion on the planet. You will not feel this way forever. There will be a point where you feel finally ready to move on.
4) Reach out for help if you need it.: There's no shame in reaching out for help. In fact, you will require help to get through this. Grief is very real, and if you don't open up to yourself and other people, you'll find it'll be harder to process. Sometimes you'll need help because the feelings will make it harder to physically do things. Sometimes you'll need help because you need to express yourself to your friends by talking to them. Reach out to someone you trust, especially if you find yourself going to dark places, such as suicide or self harm. There is help avaliable for you in many ways.