Tonight, I was at a dance competition. The Oregon State Championship. It including performing dancers from West Lynn, Clackamas, Canby, Lincoln, Parkrose, Liberty, Pendleton, and many more. Since an older sister of mine is on our high school's dance team, I spent hours watching the dances (and yes, it did bore me eventually). One in particular stood out to me.
It demonstrated the five stages of grief, which has apparently become a vivid pattern recurring in my life because all stages sounded very familiar and experienced to me.
The dancers started out wearing dresses with five layers in different colors. Five backdrop walls stood behind them. At the beginning, they turned a yellow wall to reveal the word "Denial".
It reminded me of words I've held inside but wouldn't dare reveal.
"No, you can't. You don't." "I'm completely fine. It means nothing anyway." "There's no way she feels how I do."
The yellow was torn from the dresses and a new red wall flipped to show "Anger".
The old thoughts that haunt me returned.
"No! I'm just what she wanted me to be!" "Why does everyone like her so much?" "He's not what you say he is."
When the red fell away, green spelled out "Bargaining".
But all I ever remember doing in this stage was crying out to God over and over again until I thought he'd never help me. Desperate cries and wishing to be not a cell in the air filled in the empty crevices of this word.
I already knew what was coming next. The least bearable, most horrible pain I'll ever feel, and also the most returning turned into a blue word: "Depression".
This chilling phase always illustrates the same thing to us every time we experience it, but in a new and somehow even more terrible way than before
" I'm such a loser. I'm completely hopeless." "I'm entirely nothing to others. I'm completely hopeless." "There's another that fought the same fight, and there I was, thinking I was valiant. I'm completely hopeless."
The one stage I wasn't so familiar with was the last.
White streams flew through the air as appeared the word on the wall:
"Acceptance."
Now I can't think of one time I fully accepted myself. I was the crime against my own mind. All of my "suffering" has been me chattering in my own ears. For once, I'd like to be proud of something I'd done and not ashamed. None of those conflicts were ever fully resolved in my mind. They were just ignored after a while and I learned to live with them. Every long while, all the previous pain comes right back at the same time and does all but drive me mentally ill. I've rolled on the floor crying, been afraid of my own reflection, and had emotional breakdowns at some of the least convenient times and places because of this. When a whole life's worth of regret, fear, shame, loneliness, and fallen hopes comes crashing down on you all together, a little piece of you just dies.
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