Yesterday I told a second person at work that my father died. She came to my office unexpectedly. I’m a pretty quiet person - I keep to myself. I don’t get involved in gossip nor am I nasty to people. I just do my job.

Well, she came over to my office and said, “I’m going to tell you something I haven’t told my supervisor or anyone - I’m going to have surgery. I will be out for a couple of months but I don’t know when I will be back.” She went on to tell me that the reason that she was telling me this is because she needed to tell someone and she knew that I would keep it to myself. It surprised me that she reached out to me because I feel so disconnected from my team socially.

I told her that I appreciated her for letting me know and asked her what she was getting surgery for and asked if she thought she would be returning to work at all. It was a good talk. Something told me that I could trust her, like she trusted me.

I told her about my father. It felt good to tell her. And I immediately noticed the difference in her response. She’s someone who’s familiar with grief - she hugged me, asked me why I was at work, told me to think of myself first and everything else second while grieving. She offered to come sit with me while she’s recovering. She hugged me a second time. I felt so comforted - even though I cried like a baby during the conversation. She helped me pick days to take off to take care of myself and just not be on. I chose Wednesday (today) and next Tuesday. It was so unlike how my experiences with my mom and grandma have been. My grandma was great at first, but after 5 days - every time I would say, “I’m overwhelmed,” [because I don’t know how else to describe this feeling] she would run through a list of household things that I haven’t done - that I could do to distract me.

And the thing is - I learned yesterday that the methods that I have to distract myself aren’t full-proof, sometimes working on my neocities site doesn’t take me out of my head. Sometimes taking a shower makes me cry and makes me feel like a panic attack will occur at any moment instead of calming me. Sometimes things don’t work.

Sometimes I just need to sit with it.

Talking to my coworker propelled me to tell my closest friend, Keni. I didn’t want to tell her. I didn’t want to ruin her trip. She was gone from Thursday to Sunday. She went to Arizona to attend her friend’s wedding. But it also felt good to talk to her about everything. I called her a little after the convo with my co-worker. Once again, there’s a stark difference in the responses of people who have griefed before and recently.

She also offered to come visit yesterday at my job, but I said no, I have meetings. But really I meant that I didn’t know if I would be able to stop crying once I saw her. And the last thing I wanted to do was cry at work again, especially uncontrollably.

I feel so out of control - I bounce from feeling overwhelmed, to sadness, to feeling normal again, to feeling distracted or off. It’s confusing. There’s no proper name for what I’m feeling except grief. Yesterday I wondered whether the people around me, like my supervisor thought I was faking it - because I can play normal in meetings. I can smile and joke and make all of my usual jokes but as soon as I return to my office, I’m not well. I’m distracted and upset. Someone said something to me, a higher up, that rubbed me the wrong way and I found myself thinking, would they say this to me if they knew I had just lost my dad not even a week ago?

I don’t know whether it was a good idea or a bad idea to not let people know that my dad died. I feel so alone, but I’m also adamant that I don’t want to receive one of those sympathy cards. I don’t want people to ask me questions, because questions lead to tears, and these people at work (some of them) don’t deserve my vulnerability, but in the same breath - I’m lonely.

Yesterday I wanted to go to another managers office and just sit with them and work. I was having such a problem with focusing - and thought maybe it had something to do with me being alone with my thoughts. I didn’t even particular want to have a conversation with them. I just want to work somewhere - I’m not alone - because it’s less noisy in my brain when I’m not alone. I thought about going to this one manager who I used to be close with until last year when she became so nasty towards….and I’m paraphrasing there was a lot of things that happened. Things that I did and things that she did….I guess I could’ve also went to Tay - I’m not super close with her but she understands grief and her office is right next to mine. She probably would’ve let me sit with her, but she sometimes gets a lot of visitors. Similar to the other manager that I mentioned.

I could’ve went to my supervisor but like I mentioned earlier - does she think I’m faking it? Yesterday I told her that I was taking off two days and that I was having trouble with the app, so she did it for me. She asked if I wanted to use PTO or bereavement, and I said bereavement and then she made some comment like, “Yes, I think you get three days of it.” I took off two in advance, and then used another day last Friday. And I wondered if she was letting me know because she was warning me or I don’t know… I just felt weird about it. She’ll ask me how I am and I’ll just say, ‘ok’. I really don’t know what else to say. And there’s no follow up from her up. And I’m trying not to be a burden. I don’t how long people allow you to feel sad before they get tired of it.

Sometimes I feel like I’m more careful of other people’s feelings than I am of my own.

I don’t know what to do - yesterday I felt so lost, sad, and mad. It helped talking to Keni. Her stories about the wedding were hilarious and such a good distraction. It felt good laughing. It felt good hearing about someone else’s life.

Something happened yesterday, but I’m not ready to talk about it right now. So I’m going to let it go. I’ll revisit it later.

Olivia