The hardest stage to reconcile because it hinges on outside influences. Depression and anger are at least stages you can drink through. Getting drunk while bargaining leads to 3am texts and Facebook stalking. The best way to handle this part of grief is vivisection. Intercept urges to beg and break them down. Look at the problem until you discover why you feel that need. It’s never because of the thing you’ve lost. Bothering other people with fruitless hopes is just selfish drama.

Dealing with grief is easier when someone dies. Mourning the loss of the living requires more patience. Death lends forgiveness to unplanned emotional outbursts while getting emotional toward someone rejecting you is considered pathetic. I’m generally good at letting things go and one-time meetings don’t phase me. Not everyone becomes friends because we aren’t all for each other. The rarefied moment I connect with another human is why I’m not pushy. Discovering that energy in other people gives me hope for the future.

At some point, acceptance looks like a daily routine. Going to work, visiting dive bars, talking shit with friends. All the things that piece my waking world together, slowly closing over the open wound in my spirit. Cracks of regret and pain fill in with wistful hope and eventually disappear entirely. Living a simple life, disruptions like this seem momentous when they occur much like a volcanic eruption. The landscape changes, sometimes dramatically, but it’s still the same place. It will always be the same place.