~ Jia Gandhi, Intern
“What happened to you? You don’t seem like yourself anymore.” Sometimes, the answer isn’t depression; it isn’t laziness, it isn’t attitude. Sometimes, it’s grief.
The strange thing about grief is that most of us don’t recognise it until much later. We think grief always arrives with tears, funerals, and unbearable silence. We imagine someone crying for days after losing a loved one, but real life is rarely that simple.
Sometimes grief laughs at jokes. It goes to work. It submits assignments on time. It attends birthdays, replies with “I’m okay,” and even posts happy pictures on Instagram, and yet, every night, it quietly asks, “Why doesn’t anything feel the same anymore?” That’s because grief isn’t just about losing a person.
Sometimes we grieve a relationship that ended before we were ready to let go, sometimes we grieve the college we didn’t get into, the friendship that slowly faded without a fight, the version of ourselves we thought we’d become by now, the childhood home that no longer feels like home, the parent who is still alive but isn’t the same anymore, or the future we had already imagined in our minds. Not every loss leaves an empty chair. Some losses leave an empty feeling.
Have you ever opened your phone to send someone a message, only to remember that you don’t talk anymore? Or heard a song and immediately skipped it because you knew exactly which memories would come flooding back? Have you ever smiled in front of everyone and then sat alone wondering why you suddenly felt so tired? That’s grief too.
It doesn’t always announce itself. Sometimes, it quietly settles into your daily routine. It changes you in ways you don’t even notice. Maybe that’s why grief is so often misunderstood. Some people become unusually quiet; others can’t stop talking. Some throw themselves into work, some spend hours scrolling through social media because silence feels too loud. Some become irritated over the smallest things, some laugh more than ever. Not because they’re over it, but because everyone learns to survive pain differently.
Think about the friend who jokes about everything after a breakup. Everyone says, “Wow, they moved on so quickly.” What people don’t see is that they still search that person’s name sometimes. They still pause before deleting old photos, they still remember their favourite food whenever they pass that restaurant. Healing isn’t always loud. Neither is hurting.
One of the biggest misconceptions about grief is that it follows a timeline. “It’s been months.” “You should move on.” “You’re still thinking about it?” But grief doesn’t care about calendars. Sometimes you’re perfectly fine for weeks, and then one random Tuesday, a smell, a place, an old text message, or a memory hits you so unexpectedly that it feels like you’re experiencing the loss all over again. And that’s normal.
One of the most powerful portrayals of grief comes from the series Never Have I Ever. After losing her father, Devi doesn’t spend every moment crying. Instead, she becomes impulsive, angry, distracted, and often pushes people away. To those around her, she sometimes seems difficult or dramatic. But underneath all of that is a teenager trying to cope with a loss she doesn’t know how to carry. That’s what grief often looks like in real life.
It doesn’t always ask for attention. Sometimes it hides behind anger. Sometimes it hides behind humour. Sometimes it hides behind staying so busy that there’s no time left to feel because when we finally allow ourselves to acknowledge our pain instead of running from it, we also give ourselves permission to heal. We stop pretending, we stop performing, we stop carrying everything alone.
Maybe healing doesn’t begin the day we stop crying, maybe it begins the day we stop pretending that nothing hurts. So if you’ve been feeling unusually angry lately, or emotionally numb. If you’ve been avoiding certain songs, certain places, certain conversations or if you’ve been keeping yourself constantly busy because slowing down feels unbearable, don’t rush to label yourself as “too emotional,” “weak,” or “dramatic,” ask yourself a kinder question: “Is there something in my life that I’m still grieving?”
You don’t have to lose a person to experience grief. Sometimes you lose certainty, sometimes you lose trust, sometimes you lose a dream, or sometimes you lose the version of yourself that existed before life changed. And those losses deserve compassion too.
Because grief doesn’t always look like sadness. Sometimes it looks like a person who keeps showing up every day, smiling when they’re expected to smile, doing everything they’re supposed to do while quietly carrying a loss that nobody else can see. And maybe the kindest thing we can do for ourselves and for others is to remember that not everyone who is grieving is crying. Some people are simply trying their best to keep going.
