Beauty in Grief?

Beauty in Grief?

I don't believe there is any greater pain, or beauty in the world than grief.. that awful, miserable, angry thing. It is an antagonizing monster that I wish would have the decency to keep its distance. Nothing can adequately prepare you for such an incomprehensible "feeling", and you constantly find yourself not knowing what to do. Should I cry? Should I scream? Should I embrace a fake smile for others around me, learning to live comfortably behind a mask that reads "I'm okay"? Shall I pace the floor for hours on end, while my heart and mind battle to the death, brutally fighting to remember the good verses the bad? I did not know how to walk out that door one last time, without turning around to walk back inside. Because I didn't feel ready. I did not know how to say goodbye to the place I once called home, or to bid farewell to the life I thought was mine. As I stared at these walls one last time, Grief began to feel like an actual dark presence standing in the room with me. I gathered what little strength I had and I did my best to ignore it, shoving it away whenever I'd feel it getting close to me. But Grief is a persistent enemy. It always somehow manages to grip you when you least expect it, settling itself into your daily routines. As I began to experience the darkness of Grief beginning to overtake me, I fought hard to remind myself that Grief is love, but in a different form. But in this present moment, it was impossible for me to recognize any beauty at all in Grief, because love is both extraordinary and beautiful, while Grief is both debilitating and cruel. Perhaps I was previously not well-acquainted with Grief, or maybe I had simply forgotten what it was like to feel, and just how deep the pain extends, how it engulfs and changes you.

The act of healing is excruciatingly painful, much like cauterizing a gaping wound. Would it not be simpler to just walk around with the wound, pretending like everything is fine while bandaging it up with distraction after distraction, constantly and persistently swapping it out for one thing over another? Nobody desires to enter the door where healing is sure to take place, because something inside you remains consciously aware that the pain of healing and grieving will be equal to the pain of the wound itself, if not more so. It is the equivalent of cauterizing a wound so big and so deep that it would not only be impossible, but potentially even fatal to the heart to process all at once. It is okay to heal a little bit at a time, only to step away and eventually come back to heal a little more.