Saturday, November 27, 2010

that whole breakup thing...



Elizabeth Kubler-Ross says that the five stages of grief are not stops on some linear timeline of grief. Not everyone experiences all of them and not everyone experiences them in the same order.



As I finally, and painfully, reach acceptance I am still left with this hole - this sadness of finally saying goodbye. And, she’s right. I didn’t go through them “in order” it went more like this:


Denial – complete disbelief that I was hearing what I was hearing. I felt pain, overwhelming confusion, shock, a strong feeling that we were experiencing a huge misunderstanding and we just needed to talk enough to realize it. I decided that if I said things just the right way he would understand that I thought he was breaking up with me when he wasn’t. (but, alas, he was). Such devastating excruciating pain in my solar plexus .


Kubler-Ross goes on to say that Denial is nature’s way of only letting in the little that we can handle as we struggle to make it through each day.


Depression – immediately set in as I realized what had happened. I’m still depressed. I have been depressed throughout these past six (or more) weeks. I’m even medicated, and yet it takes a simple statement, observation, song, or smell and a switch flips inside of me and all I can do I cry and try to escape. Eating is hard to do. Food feels like rocks in my stomach – added to the rock that my solar plexus has become. This depression has taken the other stages by the hand and stuck by like an old friend. That friend that makes you feel worse, even as you are trying to heal.


“grief enters our lives on a deeper level, deeper than we ever imagined. This depressive stage feels as though it will last forever” (Elizabeth Kubler-Ross)


Bargaining – I couldn’t imagine how this would fit into my experiences. I didn’t even see it coming. But somehow I got him to agree to be “physically exclusive” while we tried to “work through this”. He agreed, even though he knew there wasn’t anything to work through. Somehow, though, it made everything easier to deal with knowing that he wouldn’t (immediately) be sleeping with anyone else. By doing this, I was prolonging things, though. I kept flipping back and forth between bargaining “if only I hadn’t done this, if only I hadn’t said that, if only I hadn’t gained a few pounds, or if I had tried to be sexier…if only” and denial “well, we’re still exclusive, even though he hasn’t made time to see me and rarely calls” and bargaining and denial at the same time “If I wait for this month while he is hunting, which I’m sure is why he hasn’t made much time for me, then things will be back to normal next month.” While the “agreement” did help me at that immediate time, I was simply negotiating my way out of the pain – which never really went away completely.


Anger – This is one that has simply flirted with my process. I could be angry if he had done something to cause the breakup, rather than just breaking up for no reason. There are things I have been angry about for brief moments, but he has been so patient with me and tried to do this the best way he is capable of, that there is little to be angry about, except that it happened at all. Anger is such an essential part of getting to acceptance that my lack of it is probably the reason I have spent so long in depression, denial, and bargaining.


Acceptance – I can feel it seeping in. The past two days I have woken up “knowing” it is over. I can go longer stretches of time without thinking about what was, and without wondering how I will ever find anyone else. I am still depressed. I’m still not “OK”, but I am closer to accepting that he wants to move on without me – whether there is a reason or not. THAT is my answer to my other questions that lead to bargaining and denial – he wants to move on without me. Period. I can’t change his mind. I can’t make him think of me when he doesn’t. I can’t make him feel what he doesn’t feel. I understand that now.


And I know something else. While I don’t have control over him, I have control over how I choose to live my life. I can choose to not continue a friendship with him (his form of bargaining, I believe). I can choose to stay in bed all day, or go outside and sit in the sun, or go play with friends. I can take as long as I need to do that AS LONG AS I KNOW that nothing I do will change the facts. And I know the facts now. I accept it. I hate it, and it hurts like hell, and I still cry at the drop of a hat, but I accept the truth of it.


Now for the healing.