It was 2023 when I received a frantic message from a friend and colleague on Messenger, informing me that one of my staff’s partner had passed away in an accident. My heart sank immediately. I searched for words to console her, wondering what I could possibly say to make her feel even a little better. I was in the middle of a meeting, but I felt restless and uneasy because I could relate to her pain. A rush of emotions overwhelmed me, memories of losing my own first rainbow, years ago. It was as if all those feelings were flooding back, fresh and raw again. I realized how difficult it is to console someone who has lost their other half, it is a pain that words alone cannot heal.
Later that evening, I gathered all my courage, even though my hands were shaking, and made the call to her. I remember sitting in the smoking area of a closed Japanese-themed bar next to the hotel, trying to steady my voice. I told her, through my own shaky words, that it is the burden of the survivor to carry on, to live the life that those who passed away left behind. I could hear her sobbing on the other end, and I tried to stay strong for her. Today, when I see her smiling and living her life again, I’m filled with both sadness and admiration. I know how much strength it must have taken for her to reach this point.
When I lost my first rainbow, I remember getting a call from his sister. It was a day like any other, I was sitting in class, feeling unusually uneasy, but I shrugged it off as nothing. As I was approaching my home, the call came. I still remember the frantic crying on the other end, my heart racing as I asked over and over what had happened. She took a deep breath and told me that he is no more with us.
I was in complete disbelief. How could he be gone? We had just spoken the night before. I stormed out of the house, caught the next taxi, and during the entire journey, I kept telling myself it was a prank or a bad dream. I prayed it was anything but real. I cannot even recall how I made it from Kalimpong to Darjeeling, everything felt like a blur. But the reality hit me when I arrived at his home and saw the crowd gathered outside. It wasn’t a dream. He was really gone. Even after the funeral, I remained in denial for a long time, unable to fully accept that he wasn’t coming back.
That loss threw me into a spiral. When I returned to Bhutan in the summer of 2015, I was not just grieving, I was lost in every sense. The pain felt endless like I was drowning in it with no way to come up for air. I turned to alcohol, drinking heavily to numb myself, to escape the thoughts that would not leave me alone. I filled my days and nights with meaningless hook-ups, desperately trying to replace the love and connection I had lost, but all it did was deepen the void inside me. I was stuck in a cycle of self-destruction, punishing myself for something I could not control. I cheated on partners who were kind to me, people who did not deserve my anger or my recklessness, but I was too caught up in my grief to see clearly.
The hardest part of being a survivor is the feeling that you have been left behind, that somehow you are living in a world where nothing makes sense anymore. I was haunted by questions I could not answer: Why did he do it? Why was I still here? Survivor's guilt bit at me, convincing me that I did not deserve to find happiness again, that my life had ended with his. It is the kind of guilt that isolates you, that makes you believe that you are unworthy of love, of joy, of any kind of future. So I pushed everyone away, retreating further into a darkness that I thought would swallow me whole.
At the time, I did not realize that this was part of the struggle of a survivor, the feeling that you don’t have the right to heal, to move on, or to be okay. You carry the weight of the one who is gone, their absence clinging to you like a shadow. Every moment of happiness is clouded by guilt, every new connection feels like a betrayal. I was constantly torn between holding on to my grief and trying to let go. I did not know how to navigate the world without him, and it felt like I was not supposed to.
It took years to understand that survival is not just about staying alive, it is about learning to live again. There were days when I felt like I was making progress, and then there were days when I would slip back into old patterns of self-destruction. But slowly, and almost without realizing it, I started to heal. I started to understand that surviving is not just about moving on, it is about carrying the memory of those we have lost, without letting it consume us. It is about finding ways to live with the pain, to let it shape us but not define us.
Survival means allowing yourself to feel joy again, even when you are afraid of it. It means forgiving yourself for still being here, for moving forward even when it hurts. The struggle of a survivor is constant, but it’s also a journey toward healing. It is a reminder that we are still alive and that even though we carry the scars of our past, we have the strength to keep going.
But time, as they say, has a way of healing slowly, painfully, and often without you even realizing it. Looking back now, I see how far I have come. And when I see others survive their own losses, I am reminded that healing is possible. It takes time, strength, and sometimes the support of others who have walked that path before.
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