Grief, a losing game

illustration : pinterest

FIRST : I want to make sure you keep in mind the following is based on my own personal experiences with grief and the repercussions they had on my mind and body. There are as much ways to experience and deal with our issues as there are souls on earth and even though we might find people with trauma's that might seem/feel similar it's crucial to remember that you and you alone can put words on your pain and find the right (and healthy) way to process that said pain.

We've all experienced grief, hell, it might have been the first feeling we've ever felt. Crying and shouting from the moment our mother's breast was taken out of our mouths.

We all know the overwhelming feeling. The one that seems to put a hold on any other action your brain and body tries to make. The chocked up words in the throat, the heavy weight on the chest, the trembling hands and the rushing thoughts.

What we may not know, is that grief (like everything in life) comes in various ways.

I personally checked all the boxes of grief. Life has given me the opportunity (yes opportunity) to experience them all, one by one. Making sure to shape and bend my mind in ways it never did before. "Experiences like grief make you stronger, make you capable to deal with anything that may come your way in the future" is a something people love to throw your way whenever they're faced with your hurt. But the truth is : it does not.

It will only work for you if you make it work. If you are willing to put the necessary energy towards bending grief like it did you. If you are patient enough to understand that progress is a process. And that process, starts with understanding.

In general there are two types of grief : the one you were prepared experiencing and the one that took you by surprise.

The simplified version of the first one is the feeling you have right before getting a shot at the hospital. You know it's coming, you know there is no other way. The anticipation does not take away anything from the finality, it may sometimes even make it worst.

This one mostly occurs when something has obviously been failing for a while (school, tasks, job, gym, relationship..) and you're waiting for an end result you know is going to be inevitable negative, or when you've had a loved one sick for a long period of time, the kind of sickness they won't recover from. You feel powerless, useless. As if all you were meant to do was passively stand by as the horrors unfold. Nothing is less true, but we'll get to that later.

With this one, you're more likely to develop anxiety linked with trauma that will make you constantly extra careful over every little thing that might go wrong and make you go through that dreadful event all over again. You become more alert, your mind is constantly on edge which causes you to feel drained, tired and lifeless on your worst days.

The second type is the one that strikes you down like lightning. The curveball that life decides to throw at you while you were just there, minding your own business, and that will brutally tear you out of your peaceful routine. The same feelings of powerlessness, frustration and 'what-ifs' pop up with this one, amplified by a different kind of emotion : dissociation. The nasty little devil that makes you reconsider if what you're experiencing is even real; if whatever tragic situation and all its repercussions even truly exist.

This kind of trauma will often trigger another kind of mechanism in you I like to call : the turning signal. Much like that annoying light and sound; every time you'll be faced with the consequences linked to grief, your mind will keep coming and going due to the dissociation. Between what's actually happening and what you believe is happening. Between you trying to make sense of what is your new reality and the more comfortable feeling of denial. Creating a never ending cycle going from intense emotional distress to complete numbness.

The common denominator between those two versions of grief is their ability to touch something fundamentally deep in humans : our God-complex, more precisely our belief to constantly be in complete control of our lives. The truth is : there are clear limits to what we actually can influence about our lives, on an individual scale. The rest is a meticulously almost mathematic result of the sum of all actions, of all the souls that have had any kind of implication in our storylines. (Don't even try to do the math, I can literally smell your brain burning rn).

Whilst our egocentric little minds (fed by multiple ways society has to make us believe in free will and promote individuality) have us believe we are sole masters of our lives, nothing less is true. We are only partially in control of our own lives, the same way we are partially in control of other people's lives. All living things are linked together by an intricate scheme we could not be able to fully comprehend nor experience since it is spread over a millions years old timeline. Which makes every event that directly happened to 'us' actually something that implicated various different components over time, making them much more than just simple 'bystanders' to what we believe to be our own very little biopic.

Ego is by far one of the biggest obstacles when it comes to dealing with grief : Why did this happen to me ? Why do I have to suffer this way ? Why can't I get what I want ? -me, me, me, me & me- In the whirlwind that is our pain we often forget to take a step back and look at the bigger picture : multiple events, affected various people in several ways, having thus different repercussions on each and every one of them.

For example :

- Someone dying in your entourage isn't something that happened to you. The action happened to the person who actually died. The people left grieving were merely collateral damage.

- A certain relationship ending isn't something that has been taking away from you without reason. Maybe one of you may not have been fully satisfied in the connection, maybe you were not ready to put in the work to salvage the relationship or maybe the connection served its purpose and it was time to let go.

Our ego blinds us from realizing we cannot be choosing when something has to end. It prevents us from comprehending that we are not the center of the universe everything revolves around and that everything happening has to go according to a timeline we decide upon.

Us not being ready for things to walk out of our lives does not mean that it isn't the exact perfect timing, it just means we have to work extra hard in making sure we shift from fighting an inevitable situation to accepting and acknowledging it.

As much as we might not be solely in control of what life might throws at us, we're however completely in command of how we decide to respond.

We can either decided to stay stuck into darkness and believe we are the only ones suffering, or decide to see where the pain comes from (analyzing the situation), acknowledging our emotions (understanding what it does to us and give ourselves time to process), let it pass through you (ending the cycle properly) and lend a helping hand to those around that might be hurt as well (opening up to the outside world after hibernating in your mind).

Following the Köbler-Ross model, there are 5 stages to grief (any kind of grief). Whilst the model is ofter considered outdated, I believe there are some truths to it we can base ourselves on to analyze our own personal grieving process more and thus deal with it in a more understanding way.

1. Denial : desperately trying to believe whatever is happening, isn't actually happening

2. Anger : looking for someone/something to blame for whatever is happening, putting yourself in a victim position

3. Bargaining : trying to exchange your grief for a lesser pain somehow, might be a deal with God/ yourself/ entity who seems to be in control

4. Depression : holding on to the idea of being a victim, thus absolutely not in control and believing that nothing is worth your time or energy anymore; entering a state of numbness

5. Acceptance : whilst being aware of the only partial control on events and the experienced pain, we're ready to accept the event as part of our timeline

Again, grief comes in many ways and there is not one magical way to deal with it. It is a particular process through which we are faced with hard truths about our personality and core nature. One that is unique to each and every one of us. And whilst it is great to be able to learn and share about the subject, it is evenly as important to make sure you are not projecting someone else's feelings onto your own. Your healing process is your own. Your grief is your own. Your timeline is your own.

May it be through putting your faith in spirituality, may it be through scientifically rationalizing the situation; there are uncountable ways to redirect the darkness brought by grief into growth. Something that might only hardly seem 'more bearable' at the beginning but that might transform into a wonderful life lesson over time.

I like to believe that everything that 'leaves', served its purpose in my timeline & had to be dispatched elsewhere to make space for something new I needed more. Something essential to my growth and evolution.

Acceptance disempowers fear and makes you realize that nothing is truly lost. Everything eventually comes back in a different form, a form we might not be familiar with yet, but will love unconditionally if we're ready to let that love in.