Exam results grief

I Failed My A-Levels, but nobody called it grief.

Not just a slight fail but an EPIC fail.

I can still remember the feeling of absolute shock and bewilderment. The paper in my hand, the noises around me, and this strange sensation of what felt like a door firmly being shut in front of me.

Nobody called it grief, because it wasn't a death, was it?

It was "disappointing results."

It was "not the end of the world."

It was "you can always do something else."

But actually, it was grief.

Grieving a future that never happened

Grief for the version of yourself you'd been building towards. Grief for the plans you'd let yourself imagine and the future you wanted. Grief for the person you thought you were going to become.

Because that's the thing about grief that so few people understand: it's not just about what we've lost but what we imagined life would look like and the path we'd already walked a hundred times in our heads. The life that felt so real we could almost touch it.

When that path disappears, the loss is real, even if nobody around you can see it.

The grief that goes unwitnessed. Like so much grief, it goes unwitnessed.

Everyone goes into fix-it mode with clearing, resits, a plan B. They mean well; they really do, but while they're busy trying to solve the problem, you're still staring at that bit of paper, trying to make some sort of sense of it all and sitting with the loss, and wow is that loss heavy to carry.

No one's really asking how you are, just what you're going to do next. So you learn very quickly to skip over the sad part, and how it feels, and get on with being practical and trying not to feel like a massive failure in life.

And the grief? well sadly, it doesn't disappear; it just sits and waits.

Twenty-something years later, this year, in my 40s, I graduated with a degree, and wow, was it tough, but the degree is not actually the point. Because the degree doesn't cancel out the grief, and I can still instantly feel all those feelings of "being a failure" from when I was 16.

Being a 40-something graduate sadly didn't just erase the 16-year-old holding that piece of paper, feeling like the floor had moved under me. I didn't want to go home. I certainly didn't want to face the disappointment of my parents. I can still feel the sickness in my stomach as I write this.

Success later in life doesn't mean the loss back then wasn't very, very real, and both of those things live in me at the same time, and they always will. That's what's so hard about grief: understanding that two very opposing emotions can live within us - joy and sadness.

So if results day just knocked the wind out of you, please know that:

You don't have to jump straight to plan B.

You're allowed to grieve plan A first.

You're allowed to sit with it. and to feel sick and to not want to talk about clearing or resits or silver linings just yet. To need some time, maybe a few days, a week, whatever you need before you can even think about what comes next.

The people around you will want to fix it, because watching you hurt is really, really hard for them.

But your feelings don't need fixing; they just need witnessing first.

I am proof that a future door isn't closed and in fact, many more may open for you, in ways you can't possibly see from where you're sitting right now.

But the feeling of loss is absolutely real.

Just like so many feelings in grief, both of those things can be true at the same time. A particular door might be closed, and this hurts, but your future is still full of possibility.

You are not a failure. But you might be grieving, and that's ok.