By Lauren Ramos

I was once a seventeen year old girl, and if you were—or are—a seventeen year old girl, you know the internal and external battles, the illusions and delusions, the longing and the loving. When I was seventeen, it was 2020, which was plenty in itself. When I was seventeen, my lifelong best friend, who coincidentally was also my cousin, unexpectedly died in his sleep. When I was seventeen, in the middle of a pandemic and grieving my cousin, my boyfriend cheated on me. 

I thought the world was literally unraveling at its seams and I was surely going to be consumed by insurmountable grief and heartache and the confusion of being seventeen. But still, I clawed my way through, believing that I had to be this strong. Believing that if I wasn’t, who would be?

And then I stood in the same room as my dead cousin’s casket with self-inflicted pursed lips and dry eyes, and my mother looked at me, saying words I still carry on one corner of my shoulder to this day:

“You don’t have to be so strong all the time.”

And since I’m no stranger to self awareness, I’ll admit that although those words continue to sit where they have for so long, I still don’t exactly believe them. It’s an ongoing battle and I wish I could say that I see the end, but I don’t. I wish I could say that I know when to be weak, when I know to shed the tears and let someone else dry them, but I don’t.

But, on the bright side, I think I’m learning to.

I’m almost twenty-two, and the grieving never ends, and the urge to be so strong hasn’t gone away, but many things have changed along the way. I’ve learned to let the tears fall when they need to, and I’m still working on looking to someone else to dry them. I have found that I’m not alone, and that there are shoulders for which I can rest my head upon when the weight of my own gets too heavy. I’m leaning into letting go of the idea that I have to be this strong all the time. I’m leaning into the idea that there may be someone who can shoulder my struggles when I’m losing my own grasp. 

And although it’s a long road to letting go of this idea, I’m becoming familiar with all kinds of love from every corner.