There’s no way to “hack” grief.
You can’t skip from step one to step seven (if there are steps that characterize this thing). You just have to go through it. What that will entail for you, I’m not sure. But if you choose to ignore this warning, I promise you — it’ll be just like a boomerang. Not the cheap kind you buy at Walmart either, the expensive kind that comes back to you no matter how hard you throw it.
The human mind rejects this notion (mine did, fa sho). We think we can bury the pain so deep in our psyches and bodies that it’ll disappear forever. It’s a great strategy, one that we are pretty pleased with ourselves for. Like magicians, we can make grief go: POOF!
But this is also a great tragedy.
First, because like with terrible living room magicians practicing their first set, the audience saw the whole thing. Your grief didn’t disappear; it just relocated. Your parents clap anyways. You feel proud; they feel bad for you. It’s a whole thing.
Second, because trying to make grief disappear kind of defeats the whole purpose. Yes, you heard me right: purpose. There’s a purpose in grief. A philosophical kind of purpose that you have to dig for. Like an adventurer searching for buried…
