As I've shared: grief is a shapeshifter. One of the many ways I had to learn to cope with my grief was to find ways that helped me feel and stay alive. There were so many things and ways that I tried and asked for advice from others. The things that worked for others definitely did not ever work for me. This is why I know it's ok to recognize how grief shapeshifts, how we need to work on suspending expectations for those in shock and trauma.
I'm going to share some of the ways I cope with my grief. Today I am focusing on my coping via sensation. The shock, trauma, and grief is so encompassing and overwhelming that you become numb. I hated being numb after a while. I looked for ways to feel something, anything besides the numbing sensation. It felt so foreign to not feel anything but overwhelming and consuming grief and pain.
I needed to feel other ways and sensations. The most accessible sensation to me, as I am single, no potential partners or play partners (because dating while you are grieving is SO MUCH), was via spices and stings.
I reunited with coca-cola. There was a sensation that made me feel alive again because I could feel the burn of drinking the soda going down my mouth and throat. It made me feel alive. It made me feel something other than grief. IT MADE ME FEEL.
All the while I knew soda in this way was not "healthy" and I wasn't and don't think about health in that sense. I wasn't thinking "these behaviors will kill me" because I have come to a space where I was comfortable with death and do not fear it at all! This is what thinking about death for hours at a time every day may result in, for some. I thought "my momma's dead! So what if I drink this soda today to get me to feel something?!"
It was affordable, easily accessible, and was everywhere I was and needed to be. I would chug gulps of coke to get a rush of the sensation. I would hysterically be crying and tell myself "you can calm down enough to open a bottle or can of soda you can calm down then." Drinking soda at these times became a way for me to get out of the constant pain or numbing impact. Drinking soda again made me social at my lowest time.
I didn't do this all day. This was like one of my back pocket, strategies for coping. I would drink coke when I was needing to be social. I would drink coke when I was at home alone lonely and feeling myself slip. I wouldn't recommend it for everyone of course. Allowing myself one soda a day helped me come back into my body and feel something in a part of my body that nobody ever touches that I was here. I am here. Cheers!
Read blog 6 here.
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