Like the cycle of grief is made up of five stages, there are five stepping stones that you have to tread on to cross the chasm, on one side of which is complete self-delusion, and the other side of which is self-knowledge. Before you cross, you have blindspots obfuscating your blindspots. You don't see what perhaps everyone but you can see clearly and you can not see where the blame lies with you or where the mistakes are yours to prevent or else repeat. By the time you have crossed to the other side, you may not have liked what the journey was like or what you had to see- you may have seen an ugliness in yourself that somehow you always knew or have known for some time was there but convinced yourself was not because you were so afraid to confront it. You may learn things about yourself you really should have faced up to earlier on, because while you ignored them, you made the same mistakes, kept falling, kept getting lost and still not quite able to admit are down to you- your fault, your messes, the consequences to your actions. But by the time you are on the other side, you will have realised that when you were back there, before you crossed, you were living in an illusion of your own creation and lying to yourself. You will also know you are now seeing clearly, and that whatever it is you have seen, it is genuine, and so are you. You will have figured out that you aren't helpless. You never really were, it was just easier to believe that you were. When you look back to where you had all those blindspots, you'll see so clearly, through the dark, the broken illusion, and you will see only fiction. In the luminescence of where you stand now, you will see how ugly that fiction truly was, and there will be no ignorance, just bliss.
Stage One
I walk down the street. There’s a deep hole between two paving stones. I fall in. I am helpless. I did not see the void; it isn’t my fault. I am lost. I fall until I land, and in the dark, without direction, it takes an eternity to find my way out.
Stage Two
I walk down the same street. There’s a deep hole between two paving stones and I pretend that I do not see it. I fall in. I am falling again. Again, in the same place, the same dark. But this isn’t my fault. At least I know I will eventually land but it still feels like an eternity before I find my way out.
Stage Three
I walk down the same street. There’s a deep hole between two paving stones. I see it, I know it is there. It’s habit when I fall in. It’s not as dark, perhaps because my eyes are open this time. It is my fault. I know when I am going to land, and where, and I find my way out.
Stage Four
I walk down the same street. There’s a deep hole between two paving stones. I walk around it.
Stage Five
I walk down a different street.
