Losing the love we had!

Losing a loved one, whether it be through a breakup or a death can be hard. It's hard in many ways, financial, emotional, physical, sexual etc. Loss is not easy to deal with and grieving is a complex and arduous process that we all go through at some point in our life.

Through the grieving process we can experience many emotions that are often mixed, contradictory and overwhelming. To speak from my experience about losing a relationship, I felt a multitude of emotions, one minute I was sad, the next angry, one minute I forgave them and 10 minutes later I wanted to punch them in the face. What you feel and how you feel it is complex and at times unpleasant.

There were days where I didn't want to feel anything, then when I felt numb and my feelings were gone, I begged my body to feel something again. Some days I could only eat a banana and my body could not take more food as it was busy processing the grief. I lost weight, I wanted to isolate myself and stay in bed all day. I thought about them all day and night and just wanted them back, but I hated them and felt hurt because of what they did to me. My thoughts and feelings were not aligned and I didn't know what to do. I put time frames on myself and gave myself 2 weeks to be back to normal, it didn't work, months later I was in a better place, but I still had some of the same thoughts and feelings, they were just less occurrent and less intense.

I couldn't handle all of the emotions I was experiencing and did everything I could to get rid of the unpleasantry. I started running, did mindfulness, did journalling, spoke to friends, booked an appointment with my doctor for medication, saw a therapist and worked on myself everyday. It was hard, I wanted to give up, nothing was working, but slowly with time change happened, my emotions lightened, my thoughts began to clear, I began to feel again and could cry out my pain.

The experience of losing a loved one is hard, there doesn't seem to be anything good about it, I hated nearly every minute of it. In hindsight, I realised I was strong, I fought everyday to not be debilitated by my emotions. Somedays I let myself stay in bed and not move and thats ok, though most days I had to get up and live. If you're going through something similar, remember that you are not alone, theres help out there and others have been through the same thing. If theres a positive from all of this, it's that through the toughest times in our lives, we learn to grow the most. I look back and think about the impact and change this experience had on me and how I am stronger and a better person.

Much Love, Joe