So close no matter how far.....

Sometimes in life random things happen that all seem to point in the same direction. As I said in the last post I have been encouraged in my writing by several people lately and for that I am thankful. I do have lots to say and even if no one cares to read it, I think writing is the most therapeutic tool there is.. Now, I am aware that some people cannot read without correcting the writing therefore this blog may not be for you. In the event that I one day take these posts and try to publish them I would have to edit. Since my goal currently is first to help myself understand my life a little better and second to maybe help just one person in similar circumstances, the details are not my focus and frankly take the fun and deepness out of the experience for me. Therefore, I have warned you that this will not be grammatically or any other way correct and will never ask those of you that can't handle my style if you have read a piece. With that said:

GRIEF...

I have been focused on grief lately and it was before a big event in the life of a friend occurred.. Then she got the dreaded news and ironically the sermon Sunday was about how we don't take enough time for grief in our culture.. That the ancients understood something about how hard it is to deal with losing and how we try to push people to move on... For the purposes of this post we are discussing grief in any form as it relates to you.. Obviously death of someone you love is the number one form that everyone thinks of, but we grieve lots of things..from losing a dream, to a marriage, to a friendship, to our childhood or or children leaving childhood. So many ways that it is in our daily lives and all the positives in the world do not make our grief any less.. We still mourn these events and sometimes it takes a lot longer than society will allow.

Anyone that has taken psychology 101 has heard of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and her five stages of grief, but for these purposes I want to show you how it is more than just death that she understands.. Incase you are not up on the stages they are as follows: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. I think it may surprise you to learn the true meaning of what some of these mean and not my meaning but what the "experts" say. We are so conditioned in our culture to assign meaning to words and not actually understand that there can be several meanings.. For instance: forgiveness... That word does not just mean that you will absolve someone from the debt they owe you. It means that you understand and accept what happened and you are willing to forgive, but not always to forget and certainly not to absently trust again.. As the bible says, "don't give your pearls to people that
cannot appreciate them.." I often think of it being an "awful lot of oysters with no pearls".. (thank you Counting Crows) These stages are much of the same..

For instance, Denial.. Unless you have experienced it you cannot understand it fully. Yes you have been confronted with the bad that has happened. Someone dies, you catch your spouse in an affair, you find out that you cannot have children. You know that the event has occurred, but the brain is a funny thing.. Denial and shock are one in the same and they help us to only take bits of the grief at one time.. If you were to take all the shock of it you sometimes mentally could not handle it so you go numb and just try to survive each day... obviously with lots of tears and hopefully sleep because that is the only relief you have at times.. Or in my case about a weeks worth of alcohol just to leave the world.. That is not the suggested way but in my particular case I was in such shock and disbelief and my entire world as I had known it for 10 plus years was gone... I had to withdraw on a huge scale for fear of never returning.

Then came the anger.. I believe in anger.. I was angry at my husband and my best friend and the world and God and all the people that weren't handling things like I needed and the mean people in the world that acted as if I had no right to be angry and the church for asking me to keep this quiet.. It felt like everyone wanted to protect them above me and I was soooo angry and I withdrew more. During this time there was only ONE person I felt could understand and without him I wouldn't have made it. HE had been there before.. EXACTLY like I had and he helped me through the stages. The truth about anger though is that all it is is pain. Instead of feeling numb you are beginning to feel again and you need to hold on to something and anger is easy to hold on to because you have been wronged. Wronged by your spouse, or your friends, or the universe, or God.. It is something your mind can understand and use.

Then came the bargaining.. I had always used one of two people to help me in my worst times. My husband or my best friend. When he screwed up I went to her.. when she screwed up I went to him.. I had other friends but I felt that those two would ALWAYS be there.. Little did I know that they were talking often outside of anything I knew about and not always about me. Suddenly my loyalties were gone.. I felt if I didn't have one of them I had nothing and now suddenly I had to deal with the worse pain in my life without either of them.. possibly forever.. I had to protect my family. My kids needed their family.. SO I started bargaining. I would do whatever it took to make it work.. I could forget, I could have an "open" marriage if that's what he needed.. Did I need to dress trashy? Is that what he wanted? Did I need to learn to gamble? The two of them loved that and I did not. What?? What did I have to do to make this work. I did things during this phase that a rational human would NEVER consider and I changed who I was to try and make it right. I wanted to hold on to whatever I could of the life I thought I had.. To be honest I still live here often. Not living for me or what I think is right just to try and keep the peace. I have a feeling lots of grieving people do.

OH and then it hits.. The depression... I began to feel empty. I couldn't trust anything in my life. I still can't . What was real, what wasn't, did they make fun of me the way they both did so many others, no I didn't just get a boob job.. I was still having babies so my body image issues were in full force.. Why would they both not choose me?? What was wrong with me? I knew there was a weird energy with the two of them sometimes, but she would never do that.. Friends don't do that.. Was she not my friend? How many others has it been? What is wrong with me? Why can't they love me? Why would they choose each other... on and on and on... the questions and they sadness never ever stops.. and it goes into hopelessness.. IF I wasn't good enough for the two people I love the most then how can I be a good mother, daughter, anything?? I imagine depression and question comes in many forms depending on the loss but I can assure you it is not something you just get over and it is not something you WANT to live in. Especially in my situation it was hard because we are talking about self esteem and body issues that we all have from middle school on.. How will I ever be good enough??

Then finally comes Acceptance.. a HUGE word on this.... It is NOT that you are "all right" that everything is "ok" in fact you will go back and forth through all these stages lots of times.. Most people NEVER feel OK after a loss.. EVER.. it just means that you accept the reality that is your new life. It may just mean you have a few more good days than bad ones...you can NEVER EVER replace what you lost.. Even if you make new friends, remarry, adopt.. you can enjoy the "new normal" but for the most part that hole in your heart is there to stay. Depending on the loss you may never truly trust again, love again, feel safe again. All you can do is try to be thankful for what you do have and to trust that God has a plan and be glad that your enteral life is not in this fallen world.

Grief is not something that anyone can really help you get through or understand. It is not something that can be done in a specific timeframe. It is not something that just being thankful for your outside world can fix. It is not something that time makes easier. When you truly love (whatever that may look like) and you truly lose you never ever "get over it". The best you can do is pick yourself up and pray that you can get further tomorrow. When it is a betrayal it does make you look at everything in your world with different glasses and anyone that wants in will have to pass some tests and if it is the one that betrayed you they may live in a test for a long long time depending on how long the betrayal was and how honest and sensitive they were in the beginning and are now. Every new piece of information you receive is like starting over from square one in the grief process and every lie is magnified times 1000. People may feel they don't owe you that kind of time or love and honestly no one owes you anything but if THEY have done the hurting it shows their CHARACTER and how much they value their time, their heart, and their life over the life that they destroyed.. That too will be answered for in another world.. Unconditional love is a thing to be prized but when you lose the things you loved unconditionally you are no longer capable of accepting things on face value and all the mean hateful things that people do are just further proof to a broken heart that that heart cannot trust...

Also, keep in mind one further thing. We live outside ourselves and inside ourselves and both are equally important. If you cannot open your inside after you have had a loss then you are only giving the world the "best picture" of yourself but certainly not your true self.. I personally do not want half of anything anymore.. I had half and marriage, half friendship, half a life and I refuse to live half way anymore.. This is me.. the good, the bad, the broken, the hurt, the laughter, the music, and the pain.. If you cannot handle what all is me that is ok.. I am not here to please anyone. Although some days when my bargaining is in full force I regress.. I am trying to live my best life with the only tools I have and I hope that I can take all this crap and give someone a voice that others hear because my voice and my heart never really mattered to anyone.. They now matter to me...