I lost my best friend

[Torin]

Me and my best friend are 18 and we loved doing stuff outdoors, but recently when he was hunting he had a heart attack and was braindead for 3 days before they pulled him off life support and seeing my best friend like that hurt me allot, I've known him since i was 12 and we spent every weekend together, every morning before school we would meetup at his place and we would cook breakfast together it still doesn't feel real that he's gone how do i make life feel normal again? Everything's changed and i don't think normal is going to ever happen again

[Ronni_W]

Torin, my sincere thoughts and feelings on your loss.

From my own experience, I would say that you can at least feel confident and assured that you already know "what's what" about loss, grief and mourning -- in that you're right in your sense and knowing that your "old normal" with your this best friend isn't ever going to ever happen for you to experience ever again in your this lifetime. (It sucks BIG TIME and for sure, but doesn't mean that you're wrong in your sense of it.)

Whether it is a best friend or sibling or life partner or parent who has died from Earth, we, the ones left behind, have to somehow 'rebuild' or 'generate' or 'reconstruct' a "new normal" for ourself. It feels the same as impossible, doesn't it? Sometimes even after 2 years or 12 years, it can still feel impossible. So, don't listen to any of the "experts" or people who think that they are "expert" just because it happened to them 10 or 15 or 20 years ago. Just go by how you yourself feel.

I don't yet know how to do it yet (after 2 years), but I'm trying to -- when you cook breakfast for yourself -- or for yourself and some other person whom you value and trust -- can bring in some or all of the positive and wonderful qualities that your friend embodied and tried to demonstrate and live up to when he was around.

I can't even imagine if this would have happened to me when I was 18 (I'm 62), but the words "traumatizing" and "debilitating" come to me.

I know that I don't at all know how to help or comfort you. I so much wish that I could. Other people will come along, who will tell you that they're praying for you, or will post for you a whole bejeezus-long list of "tips and hints" for you in these very early stages of when you're mourning and grieving your loss. So, I'll leave that up to those people.

Love and hugs to you, Torin. And strength and comfort and wisdom, and all that will or may be able to help and guide you.   Ronni