You could wake up in a sea of questions, struggling against the waves of grief, sadness, loss, and confusion. Fighting each day to climb out of an endless sea of turmoil with no shore and no answers in sight. Times like these make you wonder...
Does karma have her wires crossed???
In the year of 2020, I think everybody felt a sense of loss, shock and unrest.
It was in the first day of March when I read the most cryptic-ass text message I think I have ever received. I just could not understand.
WTFDHS?!?!?!?
The unresolved questions would wreak havoc in every area of my life. What was said? How was I portrayed? Did this person concoct a position to throw me under the bus somehow? What was their objective that left me so completely gutted?
What was the point? Was the truth even told? I was haunted by these questions and more, every single endless day, and every bitter night.
I felt like an earthworm in the sun, writhing under the magnifying glass of a giant torturer.
I grieved, and I wept, I wondered and I suffered and I had to process on my own the death of a 30-year friendship and all the questions surrounding it.
I imagined myself in animated form as a mad scientist in a room full of chalkboards, running differential calculations, surrounded by countless piles of chalk dust up to my ears.
All of this along with the other complexities of life I was dealing with, and the global pandemic proved to be just too much for me some days.
I simply could not understand their logic or objectives regardless of their reasoning.
Especially since no matter the vantage point, it absolutely did not make any sense to me.
See how I keep repeating? Even in telling this story? This is how annoying it was for me, every single day, the questions nagging.
The Stages
I traveled in and out of the various stages of grief for over 400 days, each time thinking I made progress, but I ended up circling right back. I know what it’s like, to feel as though you’ve finally reached the platform of freedom, only to look up and find yourself still wrestling through another stage of grief you thought you had already conquered.
I could understand the selfishness of it, but I could not understand the hurt of it.
And I had to accept that too, on my own, with no context or direction, not even a notice of how the new social contract would play out if anybody's paths ever were to cross.
But part of what was blocking my acceptance was my refusal to believe that they had already shown me who they really were, many years ago. No matter the times I deflected, ignored, or tried to course correct in this friendship-relationship, it all ended here.
The other part of acceptance was in accepting how they chose to deliver their information, and although I respected it in all its mystery and vagueness, it was in accepting all of the unknowns (and there were many) which proved to be much more challenging.
Yet, it was in my lack of answers that I found my answer. Or rather, that I finally accepted the answer, because within the lack of information - was the answer I sought in and of itself.
Remember that grieving is a journey, with all its twists and turns.
Just like life is a journey in all its tragedies and in all its triumphs.
Sometimes we’re left with all questions and no answers, and it's within those moments that we must create a new narrative because...
Tendrils stuck in the past prevent you from connecting with the present and block your alignment to the joy of the future.
The Key to Moving On
The Key to moving on is Acceptance.
Here's my 3-point process of what I had to process to move on:
Acceptance of yourself and your choices.
Acceptance of other people, as they are in whatever form they present.
Acceptance of the actions or inactions of others - especially if you don't like it.
And along with all of that, relinquishing the hope for things to have played out differently.
I had to accept my inactions as well as my actions.
I also had to learn to love myself, not through their eyes, but through my own.
So to all those that have felt the sting of death, literally or figuratively.
To all those that have loved and lost...
Even though you miss them terribly.
Remember that you still have you!
Peace
What you’re really searching for is peace.
And the peace you’re seeking comes after the acceptance.
And I am not minimizing the acceptance process in any way.
It sounds deceptively easy, but it’s far from it.
The loss of a friendship (even a "fauxship") hits differently - cuts differently.
Romantic relationships can come and go, but friends are forever - right? Or so it goes.
To all those that have loved and lost, you know exactly what this type of loss means to you. Because the value of a friendship can be everything to you.
Grace
Show yourself the beauty and grace that you so graciously give to all others.
Draw some water from the cool springs of grace and gently pour it upon the embers of hope that whisper and wish for things to have still been different.
It's in the letting go of any existing and imagined expectations or outcomes that frees you from the burden of grief. And that's what I've had to do, even now.
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