Grief Stage 2

PAIN and more Denial

As the shock wears off, it is replaced with the suffering of unbelievable, emotional pain. Well, this descriptions sounds like I am going through the second world war but to be honest, it sometimes feels like that.

If I had known that, I would have tried to stay in shock for a little longer.

Shock state was nice and cosy, Pain stage was a mere battlefield.

I was all over the place and I had all spectrums of negative human emotions one could ever have. And of course not one after another, no, mostly all at once.

The realisation of what happened stroke hard and the pain about the loss felt excruciating.

I went from denial: “This is not happening to me!” to the realisation: “Gosh, this is truly happening to me!” and I was constantly hoping to wake up from a nightmare.

Realisation about loss is a harsh thing and leaves us feeling like dying. It makes us feel as if we are disappearing as the bond we felt had broken and we find ourselves in open waters.

It feels inside, like the world should stop and allow us to adjust, but it doesn’t. Still, while we are numb and trying to figure out the whole impact of the loss we feel, time is just blasting forward and drags us with it – opening the chasms between now and the time we had before.

Now, with all this whirlwind of emotions and pain, the easiest way I found was to escape.

As the pain was unbearable and I couldn’t even sleep at nights, I tried to drown it in alcohol when on nights out and socialising with people. I couldn’t bear to be alone! I was seeking distractions, no matter which.

The downside of this was devastating, as the plan didn’t quite work out. Getting rid of these painful emotions was not as easy as I thought.

Can you believe, every single morning I peeled myself out of bed, there was Mrs Realisation again greeting me at the front door and she even had a key! She just came back into my life every morning to drop her kids off named Mr Pain and Ms Guilt so I would take care of them. As soon as them both came into the house I had to sit down with them and have breakfast! This didn’t go down well and I found myself caught up in a vicious, unhealthy circle.

Hiding, avoiding or escaping through alcohol, parties and social gatherings seemed to make things worse, seemed to prolong everything and it seemed to feed my suffering rather than eliminating it.

And let me tell you here, even Perfume Parties don’t help J

Reality was very scary, as one doesn’t know what’s really happening because our emotions are in turmoil. Nothing makes sense to the logic mind, all seems out of place, and we feel we don’t belong to this world anymore.

Life feels scary and chaotic during this phase.

There were moments I couldn’t talk about anything at all, and then there were those when all just came spluttering out.

Sometimes, I would just break down and cry and weep in pain… pain of what? I didn’t know, it didn’t matter.

Fear was one of the biggest emotions I had to face. If one loses everything, not just a loved one but all other aspects we have based our life on, it leaves us with existential fear; the fear to disappear and the helplessness about the situation.

I was scared about falling asleep and had bad dreams; during the day a deep fatigue overcame me but I had a severe incapability to relax, as everything seemed to come up as soon as I rested.

When socialising, I had difficulty to concentrate on any conversation and I felt detached from the whole world.

The profound sadness about the whole loss left me with emptiness, despair and deep loneliness. I would just weep out of a sudden, but other days I couldn’t squeeze any tear out of my eyes due to numbness.

I thought this would never end. I felt like my life was over and there was nothing left. The pain seemed to never go away… but it did cease very slowly and my emotions started to settle and I started to see things a bit more clearly. Like when mist settles after a rain shower, or natural apple juice in a glass that settles throughout a morning.

In these times, it is really important to go THROUGH all these emotions without running away but by merely facing them.

Good friends are important, people who catch us, that allow us to feel and do whatever feels right for us at that very moment. People who don’t tell us how to feel and who don’t say: “Get over it.” But who encourage us to talk and to feel anything that comes to us.

People who believe in us and give us the security we need to let go and to allow ourselves to fall.

I was very, very lucky, as though I felt let down by friends I thought I could rely on, others turned up and gave me the space, the safety boat, I needed in order to walk THROUGH this process, rather than making me avoiding it or taking the short way around.

Wise people who had learned that it’s better to face an ugly truth than living a life of dark lies.

It took me time to actually picture what impact the end of my relationship had on my whole life and this scared me even more.

It got that far, that I had a severe loss of appetite and I ended up feeling nauseous whenever I ate.

I lost a lot of weight and it weakened my body even further.

No sleep, tiredness, no energy and an ever-shrinking self-esteem were all I did harvest from this painful stage of Grief.

So I packed it up into a little suitcase and stepped on board of a train, which was supposed to carry me towards a different stage of grief.