You're somewhere that I can't reach
(at least not yet)
I have a fear of blood. As kids, many of us have had the fear of needles and even some adults have it. It’s not the needle itself that I'm scared of because I can tolerate pain. It’s the blood.
Now, blood is not exactly a pleasant sight to see. It makes many people queasy and frankly many might have phobia around it. For me, it wasn’t always this bad.
The fear is related to my past. A past that still haunts me and I want to move on from it.
My family on both mum’s and dad’s side are not the best people. Neither is my father but that’s a whole other can of worms. Frankly speaking, I can only trust my mum and one cousin from my family. Anyone else is just a nuisance and that is to put it kindly.
There was however one other person that I used to love very much. My mum’s mum. That is my maternal grandma. She was a kind hearted woman and pretty much the victim of circumstances and society. Women in her times didn’t have much liberty and freedom and more frequently the victims of domestic abuse and what not. It wasn’t any different for her. But even in those circumstances, she used to bestow kindness. She loved me very much and so did i love her.
Sometimes the pain that one feels emotionally can manifest in myriad different ways and sometimes it can appear as a deadly disease with no cure.
I’m not a doctor and I won’t claim to know anything about medical sciences, however life really hit her with a final blow after all the traumatic experience in her family life she had been through.
My grandma got cancer. And every year after her diagnosis, I kept on feeling I was losing her slowly. I don’t know what would have been better. For her to go abruptly or the slow process of deterioration she went through. And this is simply for my own selfishness.
Logically, an abrupt end would have spared her from all the pain she been through. But obviously that’s something I didn't want.
You see, I’m a coward. And this is not belittling my feelings or anything. I’m a coward because I had no power in me to face reality. I wanted a fairy tale ending. Of her getting cured by some miracle. And for 5 years after her diagnosis, she actually lived. For which I’m eternally grateful by the way.
But cancer is something that can come back any time. And frankly we can do nothing about it.
The second time she didn’t make it. I was in college completing my bachelors degree when I got a call from mom saying grandma had passed away.
I didn’t go to the funeral. I didn’t want to believe it. If i don’t see it, then it doesn’t become real for me, right?
I wasn’t delusional but obviously some part of me wished I was.
Some weeks before her passing, I had holidays going on and I had visited her. She wasn’t doing great that time. Her body was so thin I could see the bone structure very clearly. Many times she would cough blood in a handkerchief. (Hence the blood phobia)
I remember singing songs for her and she held me in her arms so very gently just like she used to when I was a toddler.
When I was leaving, she was standing at the window saying goodbye to me and I could see her getting misty-eyed as she did. Deep in my heart, I somehow knew at that moment that that was the last time I would see her.
It’s a struggle to continue on without the ones you love. It's almost as though my heart bleeds every time someone leaves me. Be it death or just simply break up. The pain is more or less the same.
So what can one do in a situation like this?
I’ve let this feeling sit by for quite some time now. And I won’t let it control me anymore. I’m taking my power back. And in order to do so, I’ll write a different ending.
In this new story, my grandma is flourishing. She’s fit as a fiddle. She tells me bedtime stories just like she used to. And we both go to sleep together at night. When I wake up, I see her still sleeping with a smile on her lips. I gently try to wake her up but her body is cold. I get worried and call my mum. My mum calls the doctor but we already know what has happened. My grandma has passed away peacefully in her sleep. I’m heartbroken but there's solace in the fact that she went peacefully and without any pain in her sleep.
This is my way of taking back my power and not letting this issue linger any longer. I know I can’t change what happened. But I can create my own endings. And even though they might be purely a figment of my imagination, they give me power to heal, to move on, to live life again without any restrictions.