Onward

Has anything so dramatic ever happened to you that it sent your head spinning and your emotions swirling around your ankles lower & lower? At first you think it's not real and if you just wait it out, you'll eventually go back to life as it was before. But life could not possibly return to what it was before. All I've done is look back. "I want my life back." I only know how to do it that way. My life made sense then. I have to get back there! I need to get back there! I know I'll get back to 'normal' soon, but how soon!?! Come to think of it, I've been a wreck. "It's too much, it's too much. I can't handle this." I've been completely overwhelmed. I don't know how or why I've survived. I cried all the time. I wanted to die. I prayed to die. I thought of suicide lots of times. I don't even have a reason for still being here. It has taken a full 2 years to find some semblance of composure. And my life hasn't returned to 'the before.' It never will. My message is pretty simple. Suffering is real, but so is healing. I was blindsided by a series of events that have devastated my life. They came one after the other during a 2 year period. I don't know if it even matters that I'm specific about them. All who suffer are remarkably similar, regardless of what caused their suffering. But the long wait through the darkness eventually led to the slightest flicker of light inside me. It still comes and goes, but it goes less often than it used to. Elisabth Kubler-Ross wrote a timeless book identifying the 5 stages of grief. I read it. It helped a little. (I don't think I was in the right frame of mind) I was grieving many losses and could be found in a different stage of mourning for each one of those losses. It's important to note here that this process is not linear! You don't exit stage one of grief, never to return there. Oh no, even this morning I found myself thinking, 'Is this real? How did this become my life?' I've been through each phase multiple times. They tell me that's to be expected; that's how it works. But I'm not hopeless anymore. 18 months since the last tragedy, I'm not always searching hopelessly backward for my 'real' life. Maybe I'll write about hopelessness sometime. I never thought it would happen to me.