Grief is Persistent.

I'm not ok.

And guys, I've been trying.

I'm eating right.  I'm staying active.  I'm maintaining contact with friends.  I'm getting out.  I'm seeking counsel.  I'm staying involved.  I have a to-do list as long as my arm.

These help.  Lots.  But I'm still not ok.

I've been reading a little about the stages of grief lately, for what I think are obvious reasons.  I feel as though they're not really stages for me.  It's not like I'm walking up a set of stairs progressively reaching the upper echelon of acceptance.  My grieving process seems to me to be more of an elaborate spiro-paint picture.

The discussion that initiated our breakup lasted about two hours (or six months, or three years and three months, depending on your vantage point).  In that time, I felt all of the stages of grief.  Even acceptance, when 30 seconds after I left him and drove away, my phone rang.  I was sure it was him calling me to say he'd made a mistake and took it all back.

It was someone else.

The stages of grief continue to spiral.  They feed each other, causing an outbreak.  A vicious circle of crummy emotions.

Denial

The denial is easy.  The last year and a half was mainly long-distance.  I'm used to his not being here.  Most days are totally normal, but for a few phone calls and text messages I'm not getting anymore.  It isn't at all difficult to convince myself for a moment or two that I've just had a bad dream and everything is fine.  Remembering is hard.

Bargaining

I think I've done a decent job of not ACTUALLY bargaining with him since the break-up discussion.  Instead, I'm just making bargains with myself, or God, or the devil, or the great flying spaghetti monster.  IF I just deal with my shit, if I work myself out of my (borderline?) depression into something super happy and chill, if I lose a ton of weight, if I become a completely different and way more awesome person THEN somebody up there or out there will make him see it and he'll change his mind.  Right?

Don't bother setting me straight.  I already know.

Sometimes, though, it's that baseless optimism that gets me through the day.  It's what keeps the depression from swallowing me whole.

Depression

Every time there's a bit of something that I can't deny or bargain my way out of, that's a time that I find myself sobbing in the bathtub or getting teary-eyed while I look for the best deal on paper towel this week.

Once, in my childhood, I crawled to the blind end of my sleeping bag.  Then, someone (probably my brother.  Or my Dad) sat on the open end, trapping me.  It was all a hilarious joke.  I feel suffocated, confined and stuck by the depression part of things.  Problem is, just like thrashing around inside the sleeping bag only made me panic more, fighting the depression doesn't make me any less stuck. 

Acceptance

I'm even trying to work on acceptance, if for no other reason than the possibility that it might hasten the end of the depression.  I try to imagine myself alone.  That alone person imagines herself getting another cat.  This person rethinks her "crazy cat lady" plan.  I try to imagine myself with other people.  Like, BEING with them.  Loving them.  And then I feel guilty because my heart is still with him.  And then we're back to depression.

Anger

I've saved anger for the end.  Not because it's "best for last."  Not because it's going to be the juiciest read.  I've saved it for last because it is the hardest for me to be ok with feeling.  In the way I think of depression swallowing me whole, I think of anger as something chewing me up.  Anger will change me. 

Anger is poisonous.  Being angry at him makes things poisonous between us.  It closes doors on our relationship (whatever that ends up being [there I go...bargaining again]).  It poisons my friendships, because my friends were "our" friends and are still also his friends.  Anger means they have to choose, which they shouldn't have to do, since there's not really a right or a wrong side to this.

But I must admit to some anger.  I'm angry that I couldn't be what he wanted.  I'm angry that I worked so hard at making myself better and that all that work now seems to have been for naught, since I've got another great mountain of sadness and anxiety and self-doubt sitting on my chest after having shoveled the last pile almost all away.  I'm angry at myself for being weak enough to fear that I might never get over him, that I might always be alone, that some part of me is missing without him.

Most of all, I'm angry that this keeps taking so much of my time.  That I can't just man up and move on and start being a happy and fun person again.

But that's what moving on is going to take.  My time.  And I'd better get used to it.  Because I can't run up the stages of grief like a set of stairs, Rocky Balboa-style, much as I would like to.  The spiro-paint will stop when it's finished, and only then will I be ok.