Grief Stage 1

If any of you have read my prelude to Grief you will find, that the fact that we don’t find any instructions about how to grief is leaving us with mere hopelessness and fear.

Because grieving is so painful and confusing, we seek help. We seek a way out of it quickly or just a few single instructions about what to do and how to do it the right way.

I tell you now, here, I have the feeling there is no.

I have never ever been grieving in my life; I am 32 years old and didn’t expect any of this to happen at all!

Although at this very stage I am feeling numb about what is happening in my life at the very moment, my heart tells me there is no way out and no one to look for guidance.

This is why I want to share with you my own experiences about my grieving. About the big loss I feel and about the confusing stages I find myself in.

Maybe it does seem familiar to you, maybe it all seems absolutely wrong, but most of all, I just seek to share something to open up everyone’s mind about losses, attachments and painful mourning.

To me, it sometimes just helps knowing that there are people who experience the same, instead of seeking instructions of how to get out.

Sometimes it’s more helpful to share and to listen than to be told what to do.

With the following Blog Series about Grief I want to share my own experiences with you, so I hope you will have fun in reading it.

My first stage was the stage of:

SHOCK & DENIAL

It wasn’t that there was shock at first and then there was denial. Oh no, done properly, one gets both at the same time and it is very hard to write about it.

Not because it was painful, but because one cannot function properly on any levels.

One was in shock, so what was there to write about?

Being in shock felt like there was no connection to the real world.

It’s like living in a bubble and everything out there seems so unreal. Like watching a movie, which has got not at all to do with YOUR own life!

The weird thing about Shock is also, that one can’t even FEEL anything. There is nothing to be felt; no sadness, no anger, no fear and no happiness either… there is nothing but space.

Feeling overwhelmed by the break-up of a relationship, was not a matter of the unexpected but because it has finally really happened.

Nothing of this touched me, at all. It was happening somewhere else to someone else but not in my own world.

I think the worst thing about being in shock is the absolute detachment from everything that exists. Nothing felt worth caring about, there was this mere numbness that paralysed all my emotional and physical functions to react properly.

All felt surreal, nothing was there to feel and I couldn’t even think straight. Sometimes one would be able to feel the rejection, sometimes one could feel overwhelmed but one wouldn’t know by what or why.

And when a voice comes through and we realise that we didn’t want any of this to happen, we believe it will all be ok when we wake up the next morning.

Most times, we can’t even talk and the worst thing of all would occur if one had no place to go.

We believe everything is ok and all went the right way, but reality, outside of our little bubble, keeps telling us different.

When in shock, we don’t know anything.

The only thing I myself knew was, I had to get out and away from rejection, as quick as possible.

I had to get away and when I realised that there was nowhere to go, my world finally came crashing down and from Shock I was catapulted with a 360 back flip straight into Pain and more Denial.