Am I Grieving?

When discussing the feeling joy in my Men In Transition class it really stayed with me when someone described it as something that cannot be expressed through words. We were discussing joy because it is the healing for grief. I came to grasp two things during this class period that grief is also a feeling that cannot be expressed nor healed with words and I also realized that I was grieving.

When you hear that someone is grieving don’t you automatically think that it’s in result of someone passing away? Well you’re not alone because until me and my ex broke up in November I too only thought a person grieved when a loved one died. When I heard the characteristics of grief in class and decided to research it further, I was shocked with what I had uncovered.

I started dating one of my best friends when I was sixteen and after three years that consisted of him wanting to marry me and then beginning to put me down and finally cheating we broke up, and we have to remember that this was my best friend. After him I dated an old Upward Bound friend who I never seen myself with but once we got together I seen us being together for forever because he was just what I needed. Surprisingly that relationship took a very sour turn in what seemed like an instant when I found out that he used drugs on Valentine’s Day and he turned on me making me terrified of him by turning on me as if I wasn’t even a person who he knew. After him I did not think that I would want to be in a relationship anytime soon but about three months after we separated at the age of twenty and the end of my junior year I had started seeing a friend of a friend who was only going into his sophomore year. The fact that he was younger than me actually did not stand out the most but it was the fact that I never felt more like myself with anyone. This sounds hard to believe because I had been with my best friend for three years and a guy who seemed perfect for me. This was also hard to grasp because just like he had the best impact in my life he also brought the most pain.

The dictionary defines grief as keen mental suffering or distress over affliction or loss and that’s exactly what I felt when my ex ended our relationship. He and I went strong for six months which was his longest relationship and which felt like mine because of its depth. I wrote a poem about him in which I said that he “was the closest I had come to being completely whole with someone” and that was just a small piece to why in the end I felt like I did. Not to mention our break up ended suddenly when he said that he had to talk to me about something but it was nothing I should worry about. He had decided that he just didn’t want a girlfriend (he was not ready for the relationship), and I said well that’s the best decision because you deserve to be happy too but I had no idea what I had in store for my future.

I knew the facts. I knew that it all came down to that he did not want to be with me. I knew that what I was giving him wasn’t enough to make him stay even though he said I was everything he asked for in a women. I was aware of all the facts and because of that I thought I knew exactly how to cope. Unfortunately I thought that I would react the same way I did to every other break up but just like when a love one dies one goes through a period in which words cannot express the feelings tearing you down inside I went through the same thing. I did not expect grief as a result of a break up but that’s because it wasn’t until my feelings became unbearable that I realized just like when one loses a loved one I had loss another person that was deeply connected with me, a connection I thought could not be made with a bloodline.

* Because i did not realize what type of wound i had to heal i dealt with it in all the wrong ways. That's why it is important to take time out to analyze your life individually in order to really deal with things.

Here is the link to a few poems about this guy...
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/note.php?note_id=119453470848
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbCdbJSiPHE

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