Monday 21 October 2013

Grieving and Healing

It's funny how something random can trip you up emotionally and you find yourself awash with feelings you thought you'd left behind. Do we ever stop grieving for the hopes, dreams and Loved ones we lose. But then again one of the major laws of physics teaches energy does not die it simply changes form. So is this what happens to our hopes, beliefs and dreams? When they die do they find new form? If so where? Do they transform into new dreams and new hopes? If so, how? Will it happen naturally like decomposition, dying only to become absorbed into something else? Or do we have to cremate them ourselves sweeping up the ashes of what once was, finding somewhere to discard them. Do we ever really lose the things we hold dear? People, memories, the things we Love, time? Is there always a lesson to be learned from that which we can not hold on to or lets go of us, the people we lose and our dreams that get washed away? 

We grieve for what could have been, what should have been and what will never be. We grieve for what has gone before and what will never be replaced. We grieve for what we Love the most and it is this journey alone that has the power to make us, break us, transform and enlighten us. The grieving process is a journey into the darkest, loneliest valley we will ever walk. It is a journey that is undertaken without a map of reason and no two are the same. It is a journey into our very soul. Grief forces us to confront ourselves, how we live and how we behave towards others. It is in grief that we are plunged into the depths of sadness and the power of anger is unleashed. There is an eye in this storm where nothing is real and nothing can be felt. As the world carries on turning you are stuck in the void, stuck in the nothingness where we feel nothing but numb. It is the void that scares the most. It is the nothing that is the most frightening. It is the feeling of not feeling that creates an indifference to life that a part of you knows is unnatural but you don't care because you don't care. 

It hurts to breathe. It hurts to cry and every morning that you wake up you curse that you're still alive. You don't want to die but you don't want to live another day of this unquantified emptiness. An end does not seem in sight.

There are moments of respite that catch you off guard and a warm memory will make you laugh or smile as you wait for the bus or pack groceries in the supermarket. It is these precious fragments of Love that override the anger, the sorrow and the ache of missing what you no longer have that creates a healing balm. It hurts but it heals.

So do we ever stop grieving or do we learn to just live with our loss and if so will those tears that spring without warning ever stop flowing?