The word ‘grief’ is primarily associated with death, even though we go through countless stages of mourning throughout our lives.
Grief, loss. It can speak of the loss of an object, a person, or an illusion. In childhood we lose a multitude of illusions.
By illusion, I mean an idealised image, like a beautifully painted picture, always beautiful in its unchanging form, that I would put up on the wall of my room or on the front page of my social media page at any time. But it all hangs on the wall of our soul (na).
As a self-determined toddler, we can -through even the most devoted parents, not accurately encode our needs, not protect us, -not out of malice, -just not see into our heads. At this age, therefore, we are almost certain to lose the illusion of perfect trust, and we are already trying to come to terms with this loss in our own way.
I thought I was going to see inside my child’s head, -well, it didn’t work. He had to learn to talk so I could begin to understand him.
In early childhood, the stages of grief continue. “Will you be my friend?” leads to a plethora of cute attempts at friendship, -but how many true friendships last? It can be very painful when we lose faith in the honesty, selflessness, and uprightness of others. One option is to give in and start to exist according to their rules of the game, another is to let go of the person or the illusion we have cherished about them, -this can be done if we can define the negative feelings associated with them by the end of the grieving process. When we used to formulate and say, even to ourselves, that xy is a liar or a pretentious person, -we can play the game straight, -even with them 🙂
Self-awareness begins. What hurts me I want to distance myself from, if I can articulate what it is, separate it from myself, from the image I want to see of myself, I start to see that I’m functioning differently, that he’s like this and I’m not. In doing so, I am moving away from the illusion that everyone is good.
With this, we could start to build up in ourselves the grief coping strategies that will be so necessary later on. We will need them, because we will have to come to terms with the fact that we can’t do everything, even if we don’t want to. That not every movement, every task, every expression is designed to be ideal and painless. In this case we can rely on our already awakened self-awareness. Again, awareness is the greatest help. Although we may have lost the illusion of the boundlessness of the self, we can discover our own limits, and experiencing them will also be a great help one day, in adulthood.
We lose objects, vain hopes, platonic loves, idealistic people. All terrible, all very painful.
It’s the eternal cycle, with each loss we die a little bit, but because we are alive we can go on in this newer form. Using our acquired strategies of reinvention, we must be reborn again and again with a new vision, a redefinition of values, while searching again and again for what is still good.
No, nothing will ever be the same. Just as we began to know our friends as other people long ago, we must do the same with ourselves. Accept the sadness, but seek and let in the newness. Would a pet help make life more bearable? You have to get one. Does it bother you that old friends don’t call? Need to pick up the phone.
The less we practiced as children, the harder it is to learn to let go of illusions effectively as adults. It’s easier to remain in a state of wanting to cling tooth and nail to idealised, unchanging images of the world and of ourselves – hanging on the walls of our souls.