Journal Entry 25 – A heart that hurts is a heart that works.

They say that time heals all wounds, but I beg to differ. The wounds don’t heal, I guess time just makes you stronger, strong enough to deal with the gaping hole in your chest. Nothing can or will heal the loss of Faris, nothing can ease the chronic, agonising pain that I felt in my entire body. A pain that just won’t go away. A pain that got worse each and every single day.

The 5 stages of grief.

1 – Denial

Every morning I would open his conversation on my BBM and write to him.

Dana: Good morning! What do you want to do today? Let’s go out for lunch…

I’d wait minutes until the three lines turned into a check mark, waiting for the message to deliver but it never did. There were lines and lines of endless messages that never delivered. I didn’t want to accept the fact that he was dead because I couldn’t live without him, I refused to. I refused to eat, I refused to sleep, I refused to accept the irreversible reality I had to live in without him.

The more I messaged him, the more it hurt.

Dana: I miss you.

Dana: Faris, answer.

After I finally give up, I put my phone back under my pillow and try to fall asleep. Although I knew there wasn’t a chance of that happening without the aid of some sort of pill. I watch the storm brewing outside my window and I begin to cry, I was always scared of thunder and lightning. Faris usually came over and watched a movie with me. He knew how scared I was of storms. I pulled my phone out from under my pillow and called him.

Inevitably, I got his voice mail.

“Hi, this is Faris, please leave a message after the tone”

“BEEP” the machine beeped on the other end of the phone.

“Faris, it’s stormy outside, I’m sitting in bed and I’m scared… I wish you were here…” I silently weeped.

“Every single breath I take reminds me of you, every single thing I do Faris, every single thing reminds me of you. I’m scared Faris. I don’t know where I’m going to go with my life without you in it” I managed to say as I wiped my tear drops away.

“Please come back” I whispered into the phone and ended the call.

2 – Anger

Seconds felt like hours, minutes felt like days, and days felt like years. Every day dragged on, and the nights felt like they would go on forever. I cried until I could not see in front of me, I cried but my tears never ran dry. I never thought that this would happen to me, I never thought that he would leave me. Why would he do that? Why would he go? The one person I couldn’t live without, why would he do that to me?

3 – Bargaining

What if he’d stayed? What if he hadn’t died? What if we kept fighting? What if there were better doctors? A better hospital? A new technology? Something that could have saved him? Why can’t he be here again? We’d handle things differently.

Dana: I need you.

Dana: I’d do anything, just come back.

4 – Depression

I miss him. There are no words in any language in the world to do my feelings justice. I never thought that I could go through everything I went through and still survive. I may have survived, I may still be alive, but I felt dead. There was no indication of life in me other than my beating heart. There was nothing to do.

5 – Acceptance

He died. Faris died in my arms. Every time I thought of the last thing he said to me I felt this agonising pain that would rip through my body; and I thought maybe soon the torture would end. But it didn’t, it didn’t ease, it didn’t subside. It just kept on eating my chest away, feeding on me… More like what was left of me…

Sitting at his funeral was one of the most excruciatingly difficult experiences I had to endure. Hearing his name followed by ‘Allah Yer7amah’ sent waves of torture through my body. It was an agony I could not escape.

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The sun rose in the distance but you could barely see it behind the dust storm. As soon as the Al Fajer prayer was over my mum walked into my room.

“Good morning, 7abeebti. I knew you’d be awake.”

“Yeah mama, I didn’t sleep.” I sighed.

“Why don’t you get some sleep 7abeebti?” she said as she sat at the edge of my bed and rearranged the pillows behind my head.

“I will in a bit mama, I’m just going to wait until the storm has cleared” I replied.

“Ok 7abeebti, I’ll be outside if you need me.”

“Ok” I sighed as she walked out the room. I couldn’t even speak to my own mother, I was too hurt, but I knew I would eventually survive, I knew things would get better. I guess all this pain just proves I’m a human.

Photograph: L.y.d on Flickr

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