Breakdown After a Devastating Loss
Tracy Kennedy Lifehack’s Personal Development Expert, a results-driven coach dedicated to helping people achieve greater levels of happiness and success.
It was almost 11:00 pm when I called my long-time boyfriend (with whom I had just recently broken up with), from my dorm room phone. I had been busy all day but had a nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach. His Dad answered and my feeling was confirmed with devastating news. *Carl had shot himself and was in the hospital on life support. I hung up the phone, walked into the long hallway outside my room and fell to the dirty dorm hall floor, sobbing. It was like something out of a movie.
The next 24 hours were a bit of a blur. My friend James arrived in his pick-up truck at the crack of dawn the next morning to take me to the airport. There was a huge snowstorm in Denver, and I’d have to go through Salt Lake first. It was freezing and snowing as I boarded the plane. I kept my head down, streaming with tears, and waited and prayed that he would make it. But as I stepped off the plane in Portland, my brother held me tighter than he ever has before and quietly told me Carl was gone. I would never get to see him again or even say goodbye. They called it ‘accidental suicide’ but we would never know all the details of what had happened.
The next few days and months were heartbreaking, overwhelming and intense. I remember making arrangements for and reading a poem at his funeral, spending most of my time in bed, crying in my room. I didn’t want to see or talk to anyone. I didn’t want to eat. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to live. I was lost. I felt guilty. Alone. Scared. I felt so many emotions and at the same time, I was numb. All the buoyant vibrancy that is who I was and always had been, was gone.
I’m no stranger to loss. I’ve lost grandparents, jobs, pets. I’ve made major changes in my life, many moves to different cities and countries where I felt the sadness and loss of what I knew, friendships and familiarity. I’ve felt the heartache and pain of leaving relationships with people I loved and some I thought I’d spend a lifetime with. I’ve left jobs, feeling the sadness that comes with that change, even if it was something I had chosen and even physical capabilities I had always prided myself on.
I only realized, as I reflected on my life at a workshop earlier this year, how much loss I have really experienced and the impact that has had on who I am. But this tragedy, by far, was one of my most painful experiences of loss. When someone dies before they’re supposed to go, there’s just no way to make sense of it.
The question, becomes, what do you do when you have no idea what to do?…
FINISH READING: How to Deal With an Emotional Breakdown After a Devastating Loss
FAT-FREE CHEF™ 