Grief. The word that has so many different meanings. Almost everyone will experience grief at some point of their life, but we as a society never discuss the different types of grief. There is grieving the death of a loved one, grieving the loss of a significant other, and there is grieving the loss of what could have been. I suffer from the latter.
I distinctly remember sitting in health class my freshman year of high school learning about the five stages of grief. The teacher read from a book and explained a chart showing the five steps: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I learned these stages, memorized their definitions, and aced this quiz, no questions asked. What I never considered was that this model may be wrong. At this point I had grieved the loss of my sport, but that was so minor that I figured it did not require completing these steps.
Later that year I became sick. I developed symptoms of a rare genetic disorder which has since snowballed from symptom to symptom. One of the worst parts of my illness is the knowledge that it is never going to become better. I know that my connective tissue will never magically fix itself, but this diagnosis requires a significant amount of grieving. Looking back on it, I do not believe that this diagram of loss is accurate. If I were to follow this model since my diagnosis, my steps have been all over the place.
The first step is supposed to be denial. I never really went through denial, to be quite honest. When you are in chronic pain, it is hard to deny that it exists, but it can be easy to forget that it will never go away. I probably was in denial for a short period of time, but this has been very insignificant in my roller coaster ride of grief.
Next, comes anger. This part of my grieving process has been all over the charts. I have had days that I feel pure happiness, but I still feel this anger deep inside. I am angry for what I have lost, I am angry over what could have been, and I am angry over why my illness chose me. This step is still not over for me, though. I have been grieving my lost life for about nine months, and I honestly do not believe there has not been a day since that i have not felt anger or frustration.
Bargaining seems quite ridiculous when thinking about it, but looking back I do believe I went through this. I quite distinctly remember saying to myself one night, "God, if you heal me, I will go to church every day". I feel insane looking back on it, but at the time it seemed reasonable. This was one of my first steps after my diagnosis, though. I have been through this phase from time to time, but this definitely was my first stage rather than denial.
Now comes the interesting one, depression. I have been fortunate enough to not personally go through this phase. I know many people with my illness suffer from this condition, but through it all I have never fallen into a funk. I have always managed to stay positive, and depression has never even crossed my mind. That being said, this was only my experience. I know that many of you reading this may not have been as fortunate as me, and struggle from this illness every day. I encourage those of you to share your story. Share your struggle, share a response to me, share anything, just get your voice out there.
The final step of this process is supposed to be acceptance. This may be possible for those of you reading this, but for me this seems out of reach. I accept my illness is real and will be sticking around, but accepting everything life throws my way seems like an impossibility. For those of us with chronic illnesses every day is a new challenge, so accepting every turn does not seem to be an option for us.
After looking at the five stages of grief through the lense of my illness, I have come to a conclusion. I have come to the conclusion that instead of setting out grief into five phases and forcing everyone into those suffocating boxes, we should accept that everyone handles grief differently. Some people may fit into these phases perfectly, but for me, every day of life has been an uphill battle. My grief has been more like a roller coaster than any diagram can depict. I have ups, I have downs, and most importantly, sometimes I back track. Some days I am further in these phases, and others I am thrown back to the beginning of my grieving process. For those of you that just lost something or someone, please consider adopting this position on the grieving process. Realize that everyone is different, and we will all handle loss differently.
Life is not always smooth sailing; sometimes we have to take a step outside of the box to board the roller coaster.
