Dying Man’s Daily Journal – Grief is Individual

Have been feeling well the past couple of days. Today isn’t starting off so good. I have the light headed almost dizzy feelings going on, which I know will shortly lead to nausea and likely the throwing up. On these days I typically spend a lot of time fighting the urge to throw up. Today, I am going to try it a little differently, I am not going to fight that urge and just go with it. Maybe by doing that it will clear my system a little sooner and things can get back to normal. Will see how this works.

I watched a cop show on TV last night. Three people standing side by side witnessed a crime. They were standing side by side so had to have seen exactly the same thing. Their statements to the police were essentially the same but not exactly the same. They were good honest people and were not trying in anyway to mislead the police. They just saw or remembered it slightly differently. This was most obvious in their descriptions of the bad guy. They were not physically in harms way so it wasn’t fear that affected their memory. Maybe it was shock or something, I don’t know.

Now, I know this was just a TV show and the whole thing was created in the minds of the writers of the show. But still, it made me realize a little more clearly, that each of us is an individual. Each of us sees the world slightly differently, from our own individual perspective. None of us see things or feel things in exactly the same way. How could we, we are each an unique individual with our own set of values, morals and feelings. What any two people share can be very very close but never exactly the same. It is like, each individual views life though a pair of eye glasses, with the glasses being tinted slightly differently based on our past life experiences. We are individuals unique from all others in at least some small way. No one else can see things or feel things EXACTLY the same way that we do.

Our feelings are our own and our reaction to those feeling is our own. This uniqueness of feelings must therefore extend over into our feelings of grief. Others can empathize, maybe having gone though or are even going through the same painful situation. Our feelings are personal and individualize so no one on this earth can ever really know EXACTLY how we are feeling.

Does this explain why people seemly react differently to a tragedy and grief? Maybe, don’t know. Does this explain why some are able to seemly move on more quickly? Maybe, don’t know. Does it mean if I am unable to deal with or seemly get over my grief as quickly as others, that I am not as strong or not as good a person. NO, that one I do know. As individuals we can internally process things at a different speed or level. Is one way better than the other? I don’t think so, it is just our individual way.

I do know from personal experience, that we can become bogged down and wallow in the grief. I believe this is the closest thing you will ever find to hell on earth. We are stuck in a place where there seems to be no end in sight for the pain. How do we ever get past that, again an individual thing. But we must work to get past it. I once heard the quote that seems to make so much sense to me. “One definition of insanity could be doing exactly the same thing, over and over again day after day and still being disappointed when the results are the same.”