Loss: everyone has or will experience it.

It is a part of life unavoidable and terrifying.

Most people decide to cope by ignoring

the mortality of themselves and others since

it is too hard to bear. Loss is an aching feeling

that many go through several stages of. For me,

it often begins with disbelief. Losing someone is an

unimaginable pain so we don’t imagine it

we decide to not accept the reality that they're gone.

This can be expressed in one of two ways

Denial: where you will not accept what has happened

to someone dear to you. Then there is disassociation:

we shut ourselves down (be it voluntary or not)

we decide we are in too much pain so we decide to not feel it.

Both are unhealthy in their respective way, denial gives you false hope

of your loved one walking through the door one day smiling

and saying it was a joke. While disassociation is a more complex

type of unhealthy. It causes all your emotions to be taken from you.

The human mind is incapable of deciding what emotions

it wants to keep so it is all or nothing.

Denial is a more convenient type of coping too society.

Many people will try to break you out of it by reminding you

of your loss. But a person in denial is a worker

who refuses to accept their loss so they cannot truly grieve.

They cannot grieve over what they haven’t lost.

The denier will continue being society's obedient worker bee

doing as they're told and staying the same as they’ve always been.

Denial is a very personal thing

for many, it cannot last long so they either

take the healthy path

and accept what has happened

or they bury it. They decide

they can’t be weak and that they have a life to live

so they cannot grieve.

This does not solve their situation or whisk away the pain

it rather makes it where you feel the pain in smaller increments

for months or longer. If you cannot completely forget that person

burying their memory fully is impossible. Thus without a magic

potion to erase them from your mind denial is not a very sustainable

form of coping. Then there is disassociation it is the feeling of needing to

mentally run away from your grief. While both have repercussions,

they are different from the deniers. It is more likely to have long-lasting

depression with the deniers and the disassociaters are more likely to

self-harm or commit suicide. The dissassociater refuses to go on with their life

as they once did they may go to work but they will be unresponsive, emotionless, or robotic.

While some of them feel so devoid of meaning in life they can’t even go to work

And they will stay at home likely staring into nothingness.

Though it is rare for them to never regain some sense of normality in life again.

When you have stared at the wall for 20 minutes plus without moving

your mind's sense of boredom kicks in. You will strive to find something to do

in your time likely taking up new hobbies or trying to reignite your old ones.

For a few this distraction may help but as often as not the things you once loved

do nothing for you, it makes you long to feel something anything at all.

This is where the chance of self-harm comes in

some may decide that they are sure they would feel something

if they harm themselves. That is but one path a person may

take though there are others: some will decide on counseling,

some will wait out their new-found depression,

some will force themselves to act normally, and others will feel.

This may be due to the subconscious or something else but

they begin to feel again. They experience all the pain they pushed

away at the moment after the event is over. They will often wish

they could go back to their emotionless self instead of the bawling form

they have now taken on. While they are going through this unbelievably

painful situation they are pressured by others to get over their pain.

Your boss, teacher, parent, or parent figure might say something

along the lines of” I know this is painful but it happens to everyone”

and then you’ll be threatened. Be it to come back to work or be replaced,

come to school or be failed, or do your chores or be grounded.

Many will understand where they are coming from even if they come off as

apathetic and cruel. For some, it’ll foster self-hatred that causes them to

demean their feelings and make them think they should in fact “get over it,”.

Though it is the responsible choice to go back it will likely deteriorate your mental state

if you haven’t worked through your grief. It will make you an overall worse worker, student, etc., and more depressed if you haven’t achieved acceptance. If you dwell upon your pain

and it drastically changes your quality of life in the long term you should see the help.

You need to give yourself time to grieve but not waste your life away.

Grief is a personal thing that no one person is right to lecture another’s coping mechanisms on.

It is painful and it is scary but I hope all whom this reaches have continued to live their lives.