There are stages involved in the processing of emotions such as grief - denial followed by anger followed by acceptance, for instance.
The stages exist to ease the transition between a semi-permanent state of mind (old) and a permanent state of mind (new).
With people such as parents or grandparents, we are suspended between the dissonance that they will live forever, yet they must die sometime. Such is the reluctance to accept the latter premise that we compromise and accept both at the same time. I contend that the working-through of this duality is part of the reason for denial and anger when the inevitable eventually happens.
Is the idea of a striated process - because to be smashed across the consciousness with the whole reality at once is overwhelming - a useful one when thinking about emotions other than grief? What about love?
I feel that I have experienced something along those lines since December 20, when L and I 'met' for the first time. To begin with, I denied the feelings which I underwent - they were the manifestation of an internet fantasy, and she was too far away away to do anything about those feelings anyway, even if she wanted to.
It took a little while to come to terms with that - but online relationships being what they are, there are still more obstacles to clear. There is the inevitable supposition that emotions experienced online are somehow displaced or diluted compared to 'real' feelings.
And there are the manifestations which affect more conventional partnerships; question of validation and beauty and connection. A state of denial, then, leads to a state of doubt. Only longevity can prevent the denials and doubts becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. With longevity comes the love-equivalent of anger: repudiation.
I tried to repudiate Bluefish, and she withstood me. The act is completed, but the task of processing it takes an unspecified amount of time. I woke up yesterday morning, and it was done. The outcome is a fresh love which overwhelms without scaring, which does not scorch with its intensity but instead affirms, for which there is hunger instead of repudiation.
