"I coped by keeping incredibly busy. I regularly informed friends I'm fine, actually, as I threw myself into a new job in communications, went clubbing every weekend, picked up a side hustle selling secondhand clothes and got suspiciously invested in my gym routine. If I could just keep busy, I thought, perhaps I could drown out the growing tidal wave of grief. And it worked, until it just didn't any more."
"I began to burst into tears randomly during a work meeting, at the gym, on my commute and everyone around me would politely pretend they didn't notice the 28-year-old man weeping on the tube at 8.30am. I tried to push through it, but my ability to keep up with my own life was faltering, and all of it the clubs, the job, the gym suddenly felt unbearably loud and overwhelming."
The narrator's father died in 2022 from a rare blood disease, prompting a resignation from a PhD and a return to London. Coping strategies included a new communications job, clubbing, selling secondhand clothes, and an intense gym routine, paired with repeated assurances to friends that they were fine. Eventually suppressed grief surfaced as uncontrollable crying in public and difficulty maintaining daily life. Lunch-time walks led to discovering Friends House, where engraved words—truth, simplicity, equality, peace—sparked curiosity. Regular visits to the garden preceded entering the meeting house, finding a coffee shop, a shop of books on social justice, pacifism, and faith, and learning about silent Quaker worship.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]