The fifth stage: Intro

A lot of shit talking

If you know even the tiniest thing about grief, you would have heard about the five stages that we often go through when experiencing it: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. But unbeknownst to me, grief is not a feeling you only experience when someone dies, as I’ve always been led to believe.  I’ve come to terms with the fact that I have been grieving for the past three years, which I am still quite embarrassed to admit. It is embarrassing to admit that things affect you. Not to anyone else, really, but more so to yourself, especially when you have a “get on with it” attitude . This (inherited) hyper-independent character flaw means I always bite off more than I can chew. And rather than spit it out, I masticate my misery, holding it in my mouth and swallowing when it has become a “manageable’ warm sludge. This sludge is what I’ll be writing about, by the way. A nasty concoction of memories and revelations that have sat in my stomach for years and that I have only very, very recently been able to shit out (via a therapist and good old verbal diarrhoea.)  Funnily enough, I write this while I am sitting on the toilet taking a shit; perhaps that is where I got the idea for this vile extended metaphor. Enough of that. Next week, you’ll read about my navigation through the first stage: denial.