How does one grieve a life they’re still living?

I used to do stream of consciousness journal entries when I was younger. I remember being able to articulate my feelings in a singular flow. As an adult, I can’t do that. My thoughts aren’t contained within a single thread, a vine, they’re branches upon branches. There are thoughts sprouting from branches I didn’t know I had.

I’ve had a terrible day. I’ve been sad. But it’s been a long time since I’ve been sad in a one dimensional way. That doesn’t happen for me anymore. When I’m sad I mourn everything I’ve ever seen or gone through. I feel sad and helpless and hopeless and alone. They told me it gets easier with time. Maybe it has, but my emotions only get louder. I grieve the fact that I’m forced to endure things I know I don’t deserve. I grieve what I’ve lost over the years- my innocence, my youth, my hope. I grieve for what I’m losing in the present, my chance to make up for my past. I grieve my hope the most I think. My hope kept me going, it gave me the drive I needed to keep searching for ways to make it better. It’s getting harder to do that now. I’m tired. I just want peace. A normal life. To be happy. I just want to be left alone.

Sometimes I try to reason with myself; I tell myself I’m being dramatic and it won’t seem this bad once I’m older, and I have my whole life ahead of me. But someone once told me that it’s usually as bad or as good as it seems. One’s experience of life can’t be negated by someone else’s perception of what they’re going through. If it seems bad, it is. What it’ll be in the future doesn’t matter. I don’t know if that’s made me feel better or worse. At least before, I could gaslight myself into believing I was just being melodramatic. It saved me from dealing with the chaos of my life. But now that I’ve been granted permission to believe my pain and give it space to exist, I can’t stand how much it hurts.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t have immediate solutions or options. I just sit through this till I don’t have to anymore. How do I live and grieve an experience at the same time? How do I do just one? What do I do to get by? How long till I can look back from the other side? Will there be another side?

I made grand claims today about how my trauma has branded me as damaged goods. How I’ll never love again, never have a family, never get married. I made promises to follow through with these things. I wanted it to hurt them, I wanted them to feel responsible for damaging me to the point of no return. I wanted an apology. An admission of guilt. But I’ll never get these things. I’ll never get the closure I deserve. I’ll never get the apology I should’ve gotten for having to make amends for the collateral damage of someone else’s abusive behaviour.

It angers me. I lost my childhood, they told me to grieve it. I’m losing my adulthood now, do I grieve it too? Do I just grieve my life? Do I grieve my bad luck and wave my fists at god? Is there nothing, no one else for me?

Is anybody listening?