“Comparison is the thief of joy.”
Comparing ourselves to others after loss and trauma.
Sometimes I worry that I’ve become the orchestrator of my own misery, that I’ve been conducting the same symphony of sadness for the last 10 years of my life because I don’t know any other piece of music. As I scroll mindlessly through my timelines on social media, watching the lives of other people I have known in the last ten years since my brother died, I can’t help but compare my life to theirs, to wonder what life in my 20s would have been like if my brother hadn’t died.
Social media has been both a blessing and a curse in my journey with grief. Facebook support groups have offered me a community of other bereaved siblings, a safe space to share my feelings where I’m not judged or misunderstood. I went from feeling desperately alone in my loss to finding life-long friends who have kept me sane when I felt like the Earth had fallen from its axis. The internet has allowed me to connect with people who know exactly how I feel in the darkest moments of loss.
But in recent years, I have often found myself feeling isolated and depressed by social media. I see another school friend appear on my Facebook timeline, a picture of their door keys in hand as they pose on the driveway of the new house they’ve bought. I even see friends of my brother sharing their life updates: a new baby, an engagement, a wedding. I feel happy for them, but at the same time, I’m struck by an overwhelming feeling of sadness, like the world has continued to turn without my knowledge.
Nobody really talks about how experiencing grief at a young age makes you feel you’re years behind everyone else your age, desperately running on the same spot like a character in a children’s cartoon, trying your hardest to catch up with people who haven’t been pulled back by the trauma of loss. I look back at the last 10 years of my life after my brother Elliot died, and it feels like I’ve skipped most of my 20s, that I’ve wasted time worrying about the future, that I’ve been too scared of life to really live.
The truth is, loss and trauma make you feel like part of you is stuck in the same time sequence, that someone has pressed the pause button on your life. It makes you scared of change, worried that moving on means letting go of what was and no longer is. I often feel guilty at the fact I had to leave my brother behind, frozen in time. I often question if I deserve those moments of happiness in my life, I ask myself if I deserve to be excited by what my life has to offer. A voice in my head reminds me my brother won’t experience those moments of elation about the future. But at the same moment, panic sets in that I’ve wasted time. Grief makes you understand the fragility of life, and I’ve not taken the opportunity to seize this life with both hands.
I know I’m probably being harsh on myself here. I’ve actually done a lot in the last ten years of my life. I’ve built my career in journalism from scratch, despite the rejection and disappointment I faced when I had to drop out of university in my late teens, struggling to find the willpower to continue as I was suffocated by grief. I’ve set up and produced award-winning podcasts, fronted investigations for the BBC, and traveled around the country for my job, having the privilege to help others tell their stories. I think my job became escapism from my personal life, a coping mechanism to prevent the dark cloud that floated above my head from swallowing me whole.
I know I should be kinder to that younger version of myself, the one who’d faced such a devastating tidal wave of grief at such a young age and survived it, pulling herself to the shore with all the strength she could muster. I know if someone else told me they felt the same regret in their journey with grief, I’d show them compassion and understanding, reassuring them that they’d done the best they could have given the circumstances. But I often struggle to show the same kindness to myself.
Research shows experiencing trauma at an early age can disrupt your emotional growth and leave you feeling stuck. I’ve often had moments where I felt like I was being held captive by my own brain, held back by a version of myself who had seen how tragic and frightening human life can be. I had picked up the bad habit of assuming constant risk control was keeping me safe from the dangers of the outside world without realising I’d ended up sitting in a cage of my own making.
It’s only in the past few years I’ve started to see that the fearful version of myself that existed in the early to mid-20s no longer serves the person I am today. In many ways, she had held me back. From traveling by myself and finding love to leaving the small town that built me but broke me, she has kept me safe at the expense of living. But I don’t resent her for surviving the only way she knew how to at the time. I just know I have outgrown her, like that well-worn t-shirt you reach for that shrank in the wash many years ago but you’ve been too busy to throw in the charity bag.
I can’t help but feel regret it took me so long to acknowledge it, but I know it doesn’t serve me to dwell on the what-ifs of the last ten years. Unfortunately, we can’t replay our lives like they do in video games. Regrets are like wearing shoes two sizes too small for you, they cause you unnecessary pain for absolutely no gain.
The same applies for comparison. “Comparison is the thief of joy.” Comparing yourself to other people and their milestones when you’ve been through a loss or trauma is pointless. If you put two of the same plants in a garden, one in the shade and the other in the sun, you can’t expect them to grow at the same rate under such different conditions. We’ll reach our own milestones in our own time.