That was it, the final straw. I thought it couldn’t get any worse, but then there it was—the arrow into my heart. I have no idea how I’m going to go on. I crumple into a fetal position and lose all control. After a time—could have been an hour, could have been several hours—I come back to the world, but it is not the place I left. Nothing is real; it all exists beyond a curtain of pain. I move through the world, but I’m not of it. I try to reenter my life, but my will is gone, and I collapse again. It’s done. I’m done. I have no idea how I’m going to get through this.
Many of us have been there. A catastrophic event that alters our reality and strips away our capacity for joy. How do you move on from that kind of pain? How do you cross the chasm back to the living? You may just want to die—to end the pain. You may even think about ways this might be done. When tragedy happens, it can feel as if your whole world is gone and nothing that’s left in the world could possibly replace it. Everything, from now on, will be inadequate, unwanted, and painful to bear. Everything that remains is only a reminder of what is gone.
