So I went out with a different man last Friday. I actually liked him, but despite talking for hours and finding out much about each other and him seemingly showing all signs of interest at the time, I've only had a sketchy response in that "we should do this again soon".
I was scared I would be crushed by ANY rejection (irony, I know after me high-tailing it out of the previous outing with a man).
But I'm not.
I'm very calm about it with a little bit of sa la vie thrown in for good measure.
I think I am emerging from the gloom.
That's not to say that I won't come crashing back down into the abyss of grief: the "7 stages of grief" have never ever been linear for me.
Technically, I reached "Acceptance" within a year, but I go back and forth, processing things that were too heavy at the time. This is according to my psych (who also didn't hold too closely to the idea that grief stages were linear and ordered like so many would have me believe).
I am still Angry.
At times I am still very Disorientated.
I have always had Hope (because I have a kind of fey acceptance that my life will not always be so hard. I've always known this intrinsically as some sort of eternal truth).
I crash into Depression, but climb back out again. Regularly.
My Reconstruction began almost immediately with a new job and now feel quite stable in my job (despite our new Government's job cuts). <----- Hope that doesn't come back to bite me later.
...and I can go through emotions from each stage in a single day.
But right now, the lows are not soooo low and the highs are tempered with the grounding knowledge that Greg isn't here.
I don't fit a box. I never have. (Five different experts have tried to Meyers-Briggs me over the years .... and narrowed it down to a mix of INFJ and INTJ ... but never able to pin it down to one or the other despite them being flexible definitions).
But I feel like I am growing with grief sitting right next to me.
The intrinsic hope in me surfaces more often than not. It survives those brief forays back to the heart of the fire where it could be turned to ash in an instant.
I am emerging.
I hope.
ah, again: me too. I can never be precisely pinned down in hose things. My MB scores always fluctuate between INFJ and INFP, my ayurvedic scores always come out even numbers of each...
ReplyDeleteAnd, those stages of grief. Apparently Ms K.Ross wrote them as applying to the PERSON DYING (yes, I shout), not for the person surviving the other's death. Totally different. In her later years, she also wrote that she regretted writing them in the way she did, as people mistook them to be linear.
Ahh Megan - that makes so much more sense that the "stages" refer to the dying and not the bereaved.
DeleteYou always make so much sense :)
Amanda,I was thinking the same exact thing today...that I continue to grow and get stronger despite this stubborn grief sitting right next to me.
ReplyDeleteGood for you for taking the risk with the date. I have really tried since my husband died to embrace and live by the words.."nothing ventured, nothing gained". Easy to say, much harder to do!
Thanks for sharing!
Yes. Yes indeed. XA
DeleteI think that is the key--growing WHILE we grieve. If we try to wait until the grief leaves and then grow, we can't because it is the growing that causes the grief to leave--a Catch 22. Emerging is such a gentle word. To me it resonates softly moving forward as we feel comfort and security in doing so. Thanks for the hope you give others.
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