Unus Annus and Grief
Hello. It is one week until Unus Annus ends, and I’m coming back from a long hiatus to talk about grief.
I assume there are many people who think that grieving for a youtube channel is silly, stupid, and even unhealthy.
I am here to tell you that, in fact, it is none of these things. Grieving is appropriate anytime you lose something precious to you, be it a close friend who has died or even losing a family heirloom that was important to you.
If Unus Annus was important to you, it is time to grieve.
You can expect to go through all the five stages of grief. This will be different for everyone at different times. But experiencing Denial, Anger, Bargaining, and Depression are all normal. Some of you will experience one after another in quick succession, for some it’ll last days or weeks or even months, and for some they’ll only experience a few of these stages. The goal of grief, as always, is to get to Acceptance.
Denial may be presented as thinking that Mark and Ethan aren’t actually going to delete the channel. Maybe they’ll change their minds. This is a normal part of grief, but it is important to not fight what is happening, and accept that the end truly is the end, and we knew it was coming. Memento Mori.
Anger is a strange one, and one that honestly I am experiencing right now. I am feeling angry that I got so attached, angry that Mark and Ethan have chosen to delete everything. Now, anger is a HEALTHY and NORMAL thing to feel, but the MOST IMPORTANT THING is that you do not lash out or behave unkindly to anyone, including the Unus Annus team. Anger is normal, but learn to feel it and manage it and cope with it, and don’t take it out on others. Maybe write about your anger, or express it calmly to a friend. Maybe scream into a pillow! Either way, anger is a perfectly healthy and normal part of the grief process, and don’t guilt yourself for feeling things, just make sure you’re managing it in a way that doesn’t hurt anyone.
Bargaining may be shown as trying to ask Ethan and Mark not to delete Unus Annus, or even making deals with a higher power to step in and change the course of things. Of course, like with denial, acceptance is key here. Unus Annus will be deleted, and it will be a loss that we all feel. Allow yourself to feel this loss, and allow it to feel awful. Nothing we can do will change the deletion of the channel, but we can be sure to have our memories left over.
Depression is one most people are familiar with. It’s the incredible and intense sadness that we feel when we lose something or someone. It may present as a loss of interest in activities, crying, feeling numb or empty. All of this is normal, but be sure to reach out to a friend, family member, or therapist if needed. This is a difficult stage to handle alone, and luckily we all have each other in this time. Allow yourself to feel sad, allow yourself to cry, but don’t give up hope. This feeling will pass with time, and we’ll be left with happy memories.
Lastly, Acceptance. This is where we all want to be, and it’ll take a different amount of time for each of us to get here. I am slow about grief, and I will probably be grieving over Unus Annus for months, if I know myself and how I process things. Some of you will be fine in a few days, some a few weeks, maybe for some it’ll be even longer. But the goal is always to reach acceptance. We can accept that this was a loss that we felt to varying degrees of intensity, and we will all miss Unus Annus. But life will go on, we can move forward, we can survive. We will be okay.
Moving on is hard. Grief is hard. But this year has taught us all something, taught us about ourselves, about each other, about the world around us. Take these lessons with you, and grow beyond them. Pursue your happiness, create new goals, complete new projects. Use your time wisely, because we all know that like Unus Annus, our lives will come to an end as well. Make the most of what you have, in the spirit of what Unus Annus was about. Create. Grow. Change. You have the power to do all these things, grasp it before it’s too late.
Memento Mori. Unus Annus.
~Jillian <3
