Greiving

Part of this process, however, is recognizing how poorly our tools are actually working for us. Recognizing that we are not our ideal self, that others aren’t as good or as bad as we think they are. Realizing that everything is much more boring, messy, and meh than we ever imagined it could be. Life becomes grey. We realize how much we’ve hurt others and have to reconcile with the fact that we did bad things in the name of our survival. We realize how much time we’ve wasted, how much of our life has passed us by, how behind we are in something we wanted to do.

In this process, we are forced to grieve. Grieve the bad sides of ourselves, grieve our messiness, grieve the hurt we’ve caused, grieved the life, the relationships, the opportunities we’ve lost. In some ways, it’s easier to stay sick and cordon ourselves off from the reality of what we’ve made of ourselves. It’s safer in the delusion that if only life had been different we would be better, but it’s not our faults.

The only way through is the grieve that fact that…no matter what happened. No matter who hurt you, what you’ve gone through, the only person in charge of your life now is you. Wherever you are now, and wherever you’re going, it’s you driving, it’s you making the choices. You must take responsibility, you must claim your agency if anything is going to get better. Let yourself grieve what you’ve lost, what you’ve done, what you’ve not done, what’s been done to you or not done to you. And move forward.