Dealing With Loss.

The Beginning.

In August 2021 I lost my mother to covid-19. My mother was the core of my family and was loved by everyone dearly, her passing was sudden which left my family and I in shock. This was all happening a week and a bit before I was due to return to college for my second year to complete my A-levels.

I was very overwhelmed with emotion and this made me very unable to do anything whatsoever for the first 3 days. But after them days I essentially distracted myself from my emotions by constantly distracting myself. The main distraction was revision for my UCAT exam (UK medical school entrance exam). To put this into perspective, I had one of the biggest exams of my life coming up in 2 weeks time which would determine how the next 5 years of my life would pan out. The thought of this now gives me goosebumps as I don’t even know how I remain composed.

The reasoning for me mentioning my UCAT is the fact that it was on that third day after my mom had passed, I realised that the world doesn’t stop turning for you, people who don’t know me don’t owe me anything. So I had decided i wouldn’t feel sorry for myself either as that would do nothing beneficial for me or my family.

Reflection on The Beginning Now

As hard as the start was, there is always a way forward. It may not have been up to my usual standard of success at the start, but I did my UCAT and got 2500 Band 2, completed my mocks the first week back to college (didn’t do as good as usual but the main thing is I did it and got through it), I passed my driving test on 23/09/21 and I applied for university of which I now have 1 interview offer so far as of the time I am writing this.

Looking back on all of these achievements all I can do is be proud of myself and thank my beautiful Mom for everything she did and still does for me because I know that I wouldn’t be able to do anything without knowing my mom is up there watching me.

Lessons.

Through all of these experiences I have learnt 2 main lessons:

•  There is always a silver lining – What I mean by this is that when going through hardships, it is fine to not feel great, but there is a positive outcome that is within your reach amongst all of the negatives. An example of this in my case was that after my mom had passed I realised that my religion is something I need to take more seriously and apply to my life even more than just the bare minimum, so an action I have taken to do this is by starting a course in January 2022 that will ensure I know all the fundamentals that there is to know of being a muslim and how to apply them.
• Spotlight effect – We always think people are focused on us in some way or another, if I was to wear odd socks I would think everyone would notice. But now I have experienced first hand that if people don’t actually know you, you are not their concern at all as everyone has their own problems to deal with. Looking at this positively is liberating as now it makes me not care for what other people might say.

Lastly, all I want to say is if you are going through anything, please speak to someone and get it off your chest. Thank you to anyone who read this, hope you could take away a positive aspect from this post.