– The Method of Crisis –
1: Denial
We hold on with all our strength to the ideal that such a state is not possible for us to accept within our schema of self awareness, and this in itself, becomes the root of the process. We begin to circle the concept in self-repetition, spiraling faster and further inward towards a catalyst that finally leads to an unavoidable implosion of our stability. The truth is raw, and it abrades at the soul so deeply that we must turn away, lest those open wounds be revealed for all the world to see.
2: Anger
When the expectations of one who has lived in a box for such a long time are too suddenly widened without guidance or structures of support, when placed back too suddenly into the outside world, the complexities of our trauma are then not a moment of happening, rather becoming an affectation of our behaviour. We try to ignore the sense of loss, lashing out and attempting to outlasting that time between better days. We allow the pain, the fear and the horror to fuel us, to disenfranchise us from our better nature. All of the emotions which we have withheld for the sake of that sense of peace have now come raging to the surface, and we have become impatient with our own ravaged hearts, impatient with our better selves.
3: Bargaining
We live in fear of losing even more of what goodness we have. In our haste to live again, we take too much too fast. We try to shape the world for what we want it to be, rather than seeing it for what it is; Only by rebuilding ourselves piece by piece within it may we change it to make its shape our own. We want to live beyond this moment. We want to live without fear. And so it is only with a greater compromise that we endure that state of mind to achieve it.
4: Depression
The memory of loving, the memory of things wanted, things felt from times before fades away. We have become comfortable in this new shape, however twisted. We have become comfortable in the condition of a stable crisis, an echo of things past, walking wretchedly amid the wreckage of our former self. Yet we continue to remain vigilant for those better days, even when weary from the battering of the harsher state of our present.
5: Acceptance
The eye of the storm passes over us; We emerge from our isolation, from our self imposed restrictions. The event is now an afterthought; An echo of the experiences that have wounded us. We continue to reboot and rebuild by human nature, regardless of our inability to cope with the lasting effects of that damage. Even when it pains us, it makes us try that much harder for however much farther that we have come. Even when we fail the expectations of our better self, we continue to set those expectations higher. Even when others would judge us for the ways in which we have survived, we continue to rise to meet the challenges that those others have refuted.