Bereavement

A/N Before You Read

Before I start this story, I want to make a few things clear. It will tend to be pretty dark, and Tobias will have very negative thoughts to the point of suicidal, so please do not read this story if you think this could be a trigger for you.

We can definitely see throughout the Divergent series that Tobias can tend to be masochistic, like beating himself up over things, blaming himself, going through his fear landscape a lot, etc. So I believe that after losing Tris, he would have an extremely hard time moving on and punish himself. I decided to (kind of) make him an alcoholic because I think it fits his personality well, and it goes with Divergent/Four a little in the sense that he used to drink with Zeke when he was stressed out. (He also mentioned, "For helping me forget how awful the world is, I prefer her to alcohol." After losing Tris, I think he would probably go back to drinking.)

This story is going to be very difficult for me to write because I have never had to really grieve over anyone or anything in my life. Many people out there who have gone through hard times may disagree with me in different parts of this story, and I'm sorry, but I don't know much about it and I'll be doing my best. However, keep in mind that the grieving process is different for everyone, and this is just an idea of how it would be for a certain character.

That being said, I have done some research on grieving because I wanted to make this story as realistic as possible while using my vision of it. In this story, Tobias suffers from complicated grief disorder, which is, "...when feelings of loss are debilitating and don't improve even after time passes. In complicated grief, painful emotions are so long lasting and severe that you have trouble accepting the loss and resuming your own life." Grief also comes and goes, and some days you feel fine while others you fall back into depression, and I consider the day he spreads Tris's ashes to be one of those rare "okay" days because he's celebrating her life rather than being miserable over it.

Tobias will have several hallucinations in this story, caused by a mixture of grief and alcohol. Since alcohol hallucinations start to disappear when the person becomes sober, I'll stick with that rather than having him see things all the time, although many grieving people do have hallucinations when sober. Plus, this will give him an excuse to drink often because subconsciously he knows that when he does, he'll get to see Tris. Some of you will probably hate the way he talks to her sometimes (even though she isn't there), but keep in mind that Tobias is in a lot of pain. And although he doesn't actually blame her for his hurting, every once in a while he will.

Anyway, I have been writing for over 2 years and have improved a lot over time, but I know that I'm not that great (and I was really hesitant to share my writing because it's personal to me), so please don't be too harsh on me.😂But if you have anything constructive to say that will improve my writing, please say so. I hope to get this story going soon! :)

Disclaimer: I do not own the Divergent series or any of the characters.