Ten Years — a Decade in Young Adult Grief
By: Shane Dermanjian
Tags: Loss, Perseverance, Death, Grief, Grief And Loss

Five — Hello it’s Me, Some Other Bullshit

As I entered college just a couple months after the year anniversary of my sister’s death, or as my family says, her Angel-versary, I was probably the most hopeful I had ever been in my life. I was catapulted from the depths of my sadness into the intoxicating world of higher education. Despite some inevitable hiccups and disappointments, it was still where I needed to be at that moment in my life. It was during these years though that I’d say I probably developed an entirely new slate of less than stellar habits because nothing (absolutely nothing!) ever wants to be easy.

Oddly enough there was some luxury in high school where everyone knew your business no matter how much I didn’t enjoy that feature; everyone knew I had lost my sister and I never really had to explain that part of my life. In college and beyond there have been some challenges in making new friends, getting closer with colleagues, and even going on first dates because you don’t ever want to make the other party feel bad for you if they ask the truly basic, introductory question of: “do you have any siblings?”. I’m clearly comfortable talking about it on my own terms (see everything above), but you never know if other folks will be and let’s be honest, the whole thing is a premier mood killer. I genuinely want to know if the person I’m interacting with has siblings because of how much I cherish that relationship now that I do not have it, but if I ask then surely they’ll ask me back: “I have two, how about you?”. When asked if I have siblings do I say no? Do I say I don’t anymore and then explain? Do I not explain? Thus far it’s always been touch and go, and more times than not I’ll just say “I’m an only child” and that’s it. There are only so many ways I can say “hey thanks, it’s okay” when someone says “oh my god I’m so sorry I had no idea!” It’s become a constant process of analyzing one’s conversations and relationships in real time because you never want to push folks away, making some interactions both calculated and taxing.

You always remember your first panic attack because you think you’re dying — mine happened within that first week or two after my sister died. Of course that arresting panic eventually subsided, but the corresponding anxiety sure as shit didn’t. Anxiety was a very new feeling for me, and so much of it stemmed from having so many of my assumptions stripped away. My sister was there one day, I went to bed assuming she’d be there the next day, and then I woke up to her not being there — it was truly instantaneous. “I’m here today, will I be here tomorrow?”, “where are you going and when will you be back?”, and other similar questions commanded my attention. It shifted my mind to a state of near-constant nervousness whenever I didn’t know where I was, if I didn’t know where others were, and so on. I felt like I suddenly lacked the ability to live in the moment and that I was newly scared of dying. It’s not that I was afraid of dying for my own sake, but it’s the fear of putting my loved ones through the ringer again were I to die as instantaneously as my sister before me. It’s not the most normal thing to think about in your teenage years/early 20s, but you kind of can’t help it. You’ve seen it happen and you are keenly aware that it can and will happen again to others, so why couldn’t it be you?

Folks back home in high school would understand if I had any weird hang-ups and for the most part the stakes were just so much lower. In college, you see friends making riskier decisions than you are and you wonder if you should lighten up or if you’re being a wet blanket; you don’t develop a reputation as a “rule follower” by accident. You can’t just forget what you’ve experienced, and you’re paralyzed by the fear of what you’ve seen. In a college environment where so many are finally freed of their hometown shackles, I couldn’t simply just shake my very recent history off.