When No One Says His Name

I started reading about how people who are grieving often feel hurt when others don’t mention their loved ones or say their names. It kept coming up again and again, and I didn’t think much of it at first. But now I’m starting to understand it in a way that feels a lot more real. How can we all be together and not one person acknowledge the pain I’m in or what happened to me? How can something so huge just go unspoken? I feel it sitting right there in the room, even if no one else says it out loud. Sometimes it makes me want to scream, just to break through whatever this silence is. 

I don’t understand how people can go on as if nothing happened. I still feel frozen, like time stopped for me but not for anyone else. Everyone keeps moving, talking, laughing, making plans, and I’m just there trying to keep up, trying to act as if I belong in the same moment as them. Everything looks normal from the outside, but it isn’t. It doesn’t feel normal in my body or in my mind. It feels like I’m stuck somewhere else entirely, watching everything instead of actually being part of it. 

I understand that grief makes people uncomfortable. I can see it in the way people avoid the subject. But no one seems to realize that the silence is uncomfortable too. Being around people who never acknowledge my brother feels heavy in a different way. It’s like he disappears in those moments, like his life and his absence don’t deserve space in the conversation. Maybe people don’t bring it up because it feels too dark or too daunting, or they’re afraid of saying the wrong thing. Maybe they think they’re protecting me, or themselves. 

The truth is, I don’t even always know if I want to talk about it. Some days I might, and other days I might not. But that’s not really the point. It’s the fact that no one acknowledges it. I would feel less alone if someone just said it out loud, even briefly. Just hearing his name would mean something. It would mean he’s still real in the world outside of me. 

Instead, I sit in these social situations feeling completely out of body. I nod along, I respond, I try to act normal because that seems to be what’s expected of me. But inside, it feels like I’m split in two. One part of me is going through the motions, and the other part is somewhere else, holding all of this weight that no one else is acknowledging. It makes me question myself. Am I the only one who feels how strange this is? 

It makes social interactions feel daunting, sometimes to the point where I don’t even want to be there. When I’m with my family, Austin is present and acknowledged. Everywhere else, he isn’t, and it’s becoming maddening.