𝐏𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐋𝐮𝐜𝐤 | 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐋𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐎𝐟 𝐔𝐬

34. K.A.M.

T H I R T Y - F O U R
K.A.M.

The stages of grief are as follows: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. I read about it in some self-help book that was stuffed between the renewable energy textbooks. The owner of said books was clearly going through some crisis.

Having them laid out like that, one after the next, makes it seem as though that's the order you'll experience them in. One by one, ticking them off only going through each stage once before moving on to the next until the end of the list and then you're done; all better, back to normal.

I'm not grieving in a typical way, there's nobody to bury, I can't visit a grave or find a star in the sky and decide that's their star, I can't talk into the void and pretend I'm talking to them. Because I'm not grieving another person, I'm grieving another piece of me chipped away, taking away another chunk of my identity. The person who I thought I was was slipping through my fingers, melting away like ice cream in the heat. People keep stealing and taking without any regard for who they're stealing and taking from.

It's only been seven days since everything went down, seven days of being vacant in my own mind, going through Earth-shattering grief.

The first twenty-four hours I just sat there, having slept through the night, all the movement I made when I woke up was pushing myself upright, leaning against the wooden wall. Hours went by in a flash, the sun set and then I laid back down as expected, shut my eyes and pretended to sleep. That was shock. They should add that to the stupid list.

The next twenty-four hours was the first time I notably hit a stage, I skipped denial and got straight into anger more accurately described as fury. I'm pretty sure both Ellie and Joel were scared to even look at me. Everything I did, whether that be eat, walk, or check buildings, I did so fueled with anger. The anger was loud, perhaps not reverberating through people's ears, but it was thick in the freezing air. Unignorable, but yet neither Ellie nor Joel acknowledged it. I don't know if I wish they did or am glad they didn't.

The next day I moved on to depression, I claimed I needed to take a piss and ended up sobbing. That entire twenty-four hours was spent holding back tears in front of Joel and Ellie, and then letting it all go in my abnormal amount of pee breaks. Never in my twenty-one years of living have I cried so damn much, I've always been able to keep a tight grip on my emotions out of necessity. But that day I cried so much my eyes stung, my nose was cracked, and tears dried against my cheeks in rivulets. Once again, it went unsaid.

Both days four and five were full of denial. I woke up pretending everything was absolutely fine, smiled, joked, ate and complained about the cold. It was obvious I was still on thin ice, and it clearly hadn't been enough time that I could've gone from near-constant, often rather violent, private sobbing sessions disguised poorly as pee breaks, to being my usual complaining, absolutely hilarious, disposition. Ellie seemed to adjust and assume that I was now getting better, she made fun of me like always. Joel knew better; he watched my every move, terrified that I'd do something that'd get me killed. I hoped I was jumping the hurdle that would lead me to myself, but somewhere deep down I knew I hadn't quite gone through every stage.

Whenever I read about the bargaining stage of grief, it seemed confusing. How are you supposed to bargain with something that is irreversible? The person is dead—the piece of me is gone. Never to come back to this world. But now I understand. I woke up that morning and started trying to make deals with my subconscious: forget and let me move on, if you do I'll never hurt anyone again. There were bargains like that, begging myself to find the missing pieces and tape them back on. There was also me finding faults and trying to decide if that would've made the outcome different. If I saw them coming, they'd never have stabbed Joel and then we would've rode until the sun went down. If, when I led Ellie, I went in another direction everything would be fine. It was all I could think of, I was so in my own head I would stare into nothing, unable to truly see my surroundings or hear voices.