It was so sudden… He wasn’t young. He wasn’t in great health. But still, seeing this man who I had so much fun with just a week prior lay motionless on the floor was not something I was prepared for, to say the least.
When I got the bad news a couple of days ago, I felt absolutely nothing. And I hated myself for it. When I got there, I had to fake every emotion. Put on a sad face, keep your head down, act like how a normal person would in this situation. Even seeing his dead body didn’t make me feel anything. It just felt like another normal day. I kept asking myself: How come the death of someone I love so much doesn’t affect me? What’s wrong with me? Am I a psychopath?
The next day, while I was going through files on his computer, it all hit me. He really was gone, and he’s not coming back. Never again would we laugh together about some dumb movie we watched. Never again would we talk about video games we’ve been playing. Or shoot random Gravity Falls references at each other. Or argue about Lord of the Rings lore. I lost such an amazing friend, a man who gave so much of his soul to me. I don’t think I’ve ever cried so hard in my entire life. It’s a relief to know I’m not insane. I could barely finish writing this paragraph because I begun crying again.
One thing I learned is that five stages of grief is not just some pop-psych nonsense, It is completely real. And let me tell you: Bargaining really fucks with you. It’s an endless cycle of questions that cannot be answered. What if we met just a bit more frequently? What if I gave him this gift just a couple of days earlier? What if I’d given him a phone call on the day it happened? Is there any set of circumstances that could have saved him? And for how long? And all that blame… How much of it was my fault? All of it? None of it? I have no idea. My brain has turned into a soup of contradicting emotions. All I can do right now is to distract myself so as to not think about it too much.
I guess now I have Depression to look forward to. Awesome. I must get through this.
Don’t know why I felt the need to write this on here, but here it is. Thank you for reading.
I am so sorry. I am trying to prepare to go through the same thing. My dad has malign pancreatic cancer and there is no chance of him getting better.
I recognize much of what you’re saying, even if he is currently alive. My immediate reaction to hearing about his cancer was to go grocery shopping. You just kind of run on auto pilot for a while and then you blame yourself because the auto pilot worked. I’m stuck at bargaining still, because what if the chemo somehow doesn’t just treat the daughter tumors? What if all the oncologists are wrong and he just bounces back? And how could I have acted differently so that he wouldn’t get cancer? These are the questions of a madman and you must know as well that there is no real answer, nothing you could have done. I still have no idea how to make the questions stop though. Again, I am so sorry for your loss.