My Migraine Battle: On The Forefront

2nd Stage of Grief

Denial (this isn't happening to me!)
Anger (why is this happening to me?)
Bargaining (I promise I'll be a better person if...)
Depression (I don't care anymore)
Acceptance (I'm ready for whatever comes)

These are the five stages of grief. I went through stage 1 last year. I think I'm in stage 2 right now. I just found out that this is a normal process. I didn't know that, but I guess it makes sense. You have to put one foot in front of the other to get somewhere. I believe that it would be unhealthy to skip a step. Like baking. You can't put in the flour and the salt and skip putting in the water. You get stuck where you're at when you do that--with a bowl full of fluffy stuff, nothing to hold it together and then it all falls apart.

When you clean a wound you go through steps: cleanse, rinse, dry, salve, bandage. If you skip the first step, then your wound doesn't heal, but instead gets worse. If you skip the third step, the bandage won't stay on. If you skip the last step, then the wound is open to infection and unprotected from bruising.

I am thinking that this is how it is with grief. If I skip a step and go straight from step one to step five then I will miss the healing in between and will surely fall apart. Here is another lesson in patience for me. It's so difficult to be patient, isn't it? It is for me. I fall very short in this area. Because what I want to do now is go right into accepting where I'm at.

I do think that throughout the grieving process, you probably have all five working in you at the same time, just one is more pronounced than the others. It's not necessarily only chronological. But, I could be wrong about that. I guess I'll know when I've gone through the whole process.

You lose so much when you're ill all the time. I'm young-ish and since I can't go out and do things with my friends or just have them dropping in any old time they want to, like I used to enjoy, I've lost every single friend. I have family, but I don't have friends. None of them could understand why I had to continually cancel our play dates. They're all too busy to spend any time to visit. Always in a rush. I understand that. That used to be me, sort of. Of course, I was the kind of friend that if I heard that one of my friend's were in the hospital, I was out the door and on my way to see them. Sometimes, they had to tell me not to come, because it wasn't serious. So, I guess I have been angry that none of them were the same toward me. Not even a phone call. Just dropped, like that.

But, I'm not angry over that anymore. I am understanding about it and actually, now I know it's a good thing that I don't have any obligations to be with them. I'll make new friends when I'm feeling better.

I lost my job, my money, my insurance. But, I still have my husband and daughter, and of course our extended family. I had to move into a trailer in the boonies (I'm most definately a city pent house kind of girl, lol), so that I could be near our family and get the help I need and not have to rely solely on my husband anymore. I have seen that it's cut down on his stress a great deal, so I am ok about this move, sort of.

Anyway, I guess it's good to get angry and just get it all out. Like I've said before, it's why I started this blog. My own personal bitch session. So, I'm airing it all out. Get it out of my system, so that I can let it go. So, I'm going to start being more forgiving of myself when I'm angry. I won't try to stop it, stuff it, or ignore this emotion when it comes up. Wonder what Bargaining will be like?

posted by Jessica @ 3:46 AM