There are times when you're working for something, something you may or may not have been wanting for a long time, and it doesn't work out. You might put hours of work into a paper or project and get low marks, despite your tireless effort. You might get your hopes up about something, and in the end it doesn't work out. Your expectations are crushed.
Then the heart-aching disappointment sets in.
The stages of this disappointment are what makes it worse. They come in waves, but they're strong, powerful tsunamis of emotion.
1. Sadness
This is where it hits you the most. You're let down, and you feel it throughout your whole being. You'll cry. You'll curl up in a ball and call your closest friend to talk you down. You'll gorge on your comfort foods or even do things to mask the pain.
Your body will ache, your heart will feel in pieces, and your eyes might even be rubbed raw from the tears. You'll feel perpetually sad. And it really, really sucks. Whether you're crying about a boy that changed his mind or an unexpected failure, it just really, really sucks.
2. Anger
Now you get angry. This doesn't always set in right away, it might take a bit before you reach this phase, but when it does everyone should watch out. You may not be on a terror raid, but your emotions are on fire. You're upset and you don't understand why these things happened. You're angry at the fact that you couldn't completely control the situation, that things didn't work in your favor.
Your heart is now set aflame and your body is full of unchanneled rage. You might say things you don't mean, and you might do things completely out of character.
You're a ball of fire, too hot for anyone to approach to talk you down.
3. Bargaining
You begin to understand why things didn't work out. You start to understand why someone didn't want you or why a professor gave you such a bad grade, and you try to convince yourself that it was just meant to be like this.
You'll begin trying to mend your heart with false hope and patch it up with promises that it'll get better. Sometimes that works, but for the most part, it doesn't. This stage is just a lack of grieving—you're not ready to move on, but you're done being perpetually emotional about it.
You're numb and don't know how to feel. Your friends might think something's off even more than when you were a tsunami of rage and sadness because you're not yourself. You're cutting yourself off from all emotions so that maybe you'll move on.
Eventually though, you do move on and it's beautiful.
4. Acceptance
This is where you move on. You realize things don't work out, and sometimes, that's for the better. Maybe your special someone was actually a crappy person, or the opportunity you missed allowed for you to find one that was even better, or maybe your professor gave you such a low grade to show you how much you could improve.
Things get better. And it's great.
You get to move on with your life to bigger and better things. You get to move on to things that maybe you wouldn't have thought would happen. You get to do better than before. And you even get to prove to your disappointed self that everything works out for the better. That everything gets better in the end.
That, if the train doesn't stop at your station, then it's not your train. And your train will be the best train there ever was. Just keep looking for it.
