Imagine you have a box. In this box are several puzzles that contain each part of your life. Your personality. Your memories. Your hopes. Your dreams. Your secrets. Your fears. Anything and everything that makes up who you are.
Now imagine that someone grabs that box and turns it upside down and dumps all of the contents on the floor. Perhaps they even scatter the pieces around. Then they turn to you and say, "Clean this mess up."
Imagine the devastation and anger and confusion that hits you while you're staring at this mess of puzzle pieces now all mixed together. And they aren't the children's sized puzzles. They're the 5000 piece puzzles. And it's not just one puzzle per life section either. The memories section alone could contain hundreds of different puzzles. Maybe even thousands. And now all of these pieces are on the floor. Mixed together. And you and you alone have to clean it up and reorganize everything.
It's not an easy task. It's frustrating sometimes. And you get mad. And you want to throw the whole thing in the trash. And you cry. And you feel hopeless. And you SWEAR there are pieces missing. Someone must have stolen them because you cannot find that certain piece anywhere. That's because honestly, some pieces are missing now. Or they've been replaced with other pieces. Your "loved" piece now reads "lonely." Your status piece reads something completely different from what it read yesterday. And you have all these new pieces you've never seen before. Pieces from someone else's puzzle. Gardner, cook, breadwinner, mechanic. Where do these pieces fit in? How are you ever going to incorporate all these new pieces into your life? And don't even ask about your relationship puzzle. All those pieces might as well be marked with question marks. Some days you get on a roll and pieces fly back together as if by magic and you think maybe you'll get through this after all. But then you realize you've put together 20 pieces today. Only 20 out of the millions that you still have to sift through. And the whole emotional roller-coaster starts over.
Some people don't understand that it's time consuming and exhausting. They try to rush you. They try to make you feel like you should already be finished. Their pieces are all still neatly sorted in the boxes they carry. Why can't you just scoop your pieces into the box and keep going? Life goes on. Get over it. But they don't understand what it feels like. They don't understand that you're lashing out because somehow some of your fear pieces got mixed into your dreams puzzle. They don't understand that your personality puzzle adopted some pieces from your memories puzzle. They don't understand that you don't want anyone to see your secrets puzzle. Or your flaws puzzle. Or your self-conscious and insecure puzzle. Those puzzle are personal. So you struggle to keep them separate from everything else. But pieces are weaving their way into your everyday life puzzle, and suddenly you can't make decisions because your security piece is missing and you haven't been able to locate it in the piles and piles and piles of pieces of your life you are forced to sift through. So you're just smashing your nonchalant piece into that hole for now. "Whatever you want. I don't care. Just make a decision." But you do care! You care desperately. But your insecure puzzle has leaked all its stupid questioning and worrying pieces into your hopes puzzle and now you're terrified you'll make the wrong decision.
Nothing is sure. Nothing is certain. You feel out of sorts because you are! Everything you have ever known and understood has suddenly been thrust into chaos. You're just trying to scrounge enough pieces together to function and you tell yourself you'll somehow manage to get the rest organized in what little spare time you have between work and family and life. Life that keeps chugging onward no matter what. Life that is so vastly overwhelming right now.
The saying is true: grieving people are literally "just trying to pick up the pieces and move on." Believe me, it's no small task.
No comments:
Post a Comment