Denial came quietly, creeping into my life with cautious, but calculated steps. I couldn’t be exactly sure when this detrimental being first arrived, but once I felt him in the air, he could no longer be ignored. Denial had a certain stillness that caused my entire body and mind to go numb all at once. His eyes were shaded, almost like empty pockets of darkness carved upon his face. The news, sharp and jagged like broken glass, had been delivered too suddenly, too violently for me to truly grasp. It was all wrong. It couldn’t be true.
There it was. Denial had consumed my consciousness with its dangerous tricks.
The Denial stage is a common and natural psychological response to the loss of a loved one. Denial refers to the period of grieving during which a person refuses to accept the reality of a situation. Denial is different than not understanding. It is a defense mechanism that helps us protect ourselves from the shock of an upsetting hardship.
I thought maybe, just maybe, there was some horrible misunderstanding, a cruel mix-up in the chain of words. She couldn’t be gone. Not like that. Not her. Not the girl who had been my first and longest friend. Not the girl that I had laughed with every day since we were four. Not the girl with whom I had shared countless secrets. Not the girl who had been there for me through the bad and the good, and every second in between. The walls suddenly started to close in on me, threatening to put me out of my misery. This was an impossible weight to bear. So I didn’t. I couldn’t.
Denial had wrapped himself around me like a cloak, a protective shield against the unbearable truth. Every shadow felt like a part of her. Every corner I turned was another chance that she could be standing there. Every time I picked up my phone, I expected to see a text or maybe a missed call. Some kind of sign that she had reached out to me and I had somehow missed it, that the gap between us was only a terrible illusion.
The days started to blur together as the delusions grew stronger. I would convince myself that if I picked up the phone to call her, she would answer. She would yell some inappropriate greeting to me from the other end of the line, and I would let out a weary laugh. If I walked over to her house and rang the doorbell, I would hear her run down the stairs and yell, “Mom, I got it!” Just like she did every time. If I went to our lookout bench at the end of the street, she would be sitting there reading the newest book, almost done with it, even if she had just bought it earlier that day. God, how she loved to read.
Psychologically, this delay in accepting the reality of the loss allows the person time to adjust to the idea of the loss more gradually rather than being thrown into immediate emotional chaos. Denial can be seen as a way for the psyche to shield itself from the full intensity of the pain, enabling the person to function day-to-day while they begin to process the event at a deeper level. This is a common defense mechanism typically used to numb the intensity of a situation.
Sometimes at night, I would lie in my bed just staring at the ceiling with raw eyes. My body was incapable of giving anymore tears. I swear in those moments, I could hear her voice, just above a whisper, floating through my dark room and into my ear. In those moments the illusions were so strong that I would almost start to believe them. I would close my eyes and pretend my reality was just a nightmare, pretend that my best friend would come home the next morning. With that, I would slip into sleep with a broken heart, holding onto the faintest hope that somehow, I was wrong.
Denial had a tight grip on my heart. Luring me into walking down an easier and less turbulent path. Just in order to avoid the scratches and bruises reality would give me. Denial would pepper me with kisses and hugs in order to make me feel safe. But I knew I wasn’t. I knew deep down it was all a lie.
Additionally, the hippocampus, which is involved in memory and processing new information, might temporarily have difficulty integrating the reality of the death into the person’s life story. The denial stage can hinder the ability to process the loss and move forward with healing. As you move through this stage, the emotions you previously detached from may start to pop up again.
The truth, stubborn and sharp, would pierce through in flashes. The empty chair where she used to sit, pictures of her scattered around my room, the hollow echo of her absence in every corner of my world. Denial couldn’t silence the truth forever. He could only stretch out the pain, wrap it up in layers of comfort that I would cling to desperately. The truth was a pill too big to swallow, and so Denial gave me small bites, manageable pieces to taste.
But as the days turned into weeks, the quiet certainty of her absence became undeniable. And though Denial had his treacherous grip on my soul, the silent and insistent fog of grief only moved closer. He was waiting, waiting for me to finally let go of the lie that I had been clutching, and face the truth of what had happened.