Take for example the end of a relationship or the death of a life. You know the pain is coming. You know how you are going to react. You can preview the whole scenario.
And you can prepare yourself for the worst, literally, but you can't fast forward past the storm. You know it's approaching and you wait in angst and you tell yourself it's going to be okay, but you have to endure the entire process. Logically, I thought, I know I'm going to be sad but I'll live--everything will be alright again , so why not just skip to that part? I want to say it's part of being human--feeling all the negative emotions, suffering first then appreciating later, but why can't I just appreciate now? I tried a couple times--reconciling immediately after a fight. I know it's going to be okay later, so why can't we just get past now? Just talk it out. The sooner we fix things, the sooner we can go back to the way things were. But it never works out for me in reality.
There's always this period. When you just want to sit at home by yourself with a tub of ice cream. When you don't want to go out or move, for that matter, from your bed or wherever you feel most comforted. When you can't help but ask yourself why--why did this have to happen, why couldn't it have been better, why is life being so unkind to you--when you know there's nothing you can do to change the past. It's like mourning (though I may be wrong since I've never mourned before so excuse my ignorance if I have used this term incorrectly).
I'm not sure how to end this post (even after Oxnard's wise suggestions, i.e. "the awkward place" <3 Jk, he was actually really helpful) but I guess that's the beauty of it. I want this post, like the recovery period, to end and I know it will somehow--I just don't know when. It's awaiting an ending and I suppose... so am I.
