Uncertainty - Stiles Stilinski [1]

forty-one

According to Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, when we are dying or have suffered a catastrophic loss, we all move through five distinctive stages of grief. We go into denial because the loss is so unthinkable, we can't imagine it's true. We become angry with everyone. We become angry with survivors, angry with ourselves. The we bargain, we beg, we plead. We offer everything we have. We offer up our should in exchange for one more day. When the bargaining has failed and the anger is too hard to maintain, we fall into depression, despair. Until finally we have to accept that we have done everything we can. We let go. We let go and move into acceptance.
The dictionary defines grief says: „Keen mental suffering or distress over affliction of loss; sharp sorrow, painful regret." In life, grief can look like a lot of things that bare little resemblance to sharp sorrow.
Grief may be a thing we all have in common but it looks different on everyone. It isn't just death we have to grieve. It's life, it's loss, it's change. And when we wonder why it has to hurt so bad. The thing we gotta try to remember is that it can turn on a dime. That's how you stay alive when it hurts so much you can't breathe. That's how you survive. By remembering that one day somehow, impossibly, it won't feel this way. It won't hurt this much. Grief comes in it's own time for everyone in it's own way. So the best we can do, the best anyone can do, is try for honesty. The really crappy this, the very worst part of grief is that you can't control it. The best we can do is try to let ourselves feel it when it comes and let it go when we can. The worst part is that the minute you think you're past it, it starts all over again and alway, every time, it takes your breath away. There are five stages of grief. They look different on all of us but there is always five. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

A few days had passed since Tess died. According to Melissa who examined Tess' body said that she died just like all of the other victims the kanima killed.

Stiles stayed by my side the whole time. He wouldn't leave my side, not even when I was taking a shower. He'd sit on the toilet seat, making sure that I wouldn't do something bad to myself.

And I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't thinking about hurting myself. Jackson made me an orphan, just like he did with Isaac.

I remember, sitting on the grass of my front yard as the paramedics strolled the body of my sister down the yard. My lungs burned from screaming her name and my eyes stung as more and more tears rolled down my cheeks. I remember when Stiles dropped down next to me, taking me into his arms while I cried my balls out and hid my face in his chest. He wrapped his long arms around my body and rocked us back and forth but I hit my fist on his chest multiple times. Somehow, he managed to calm me down and put me back into his car after his father arrived. He told Stiles to get me out of there and drove me to his place.

He carefully sat me on his bed and took off my shoes before he helped me up and unbuttoned my jeans. Normally, when something like that happened, I'd enjoy it but this time I was in trance, staring at the wall as Stiles undressed me.

I didn't even care as he turned me around and opened my bra, trying his best to not stare at my breast. He grabbed a shirt of his own and tucked it over my head, slipping my hands through as well, before he put me back on his bed.

He himself took off his own clothes before he joined me in bed, wrapping his arms carefully around my body before I eventually fell asleep.

The next day, he filled the bathtub with hot water before he told me to take a bath. I only nodded. My thoughts were still somewhere else. It's the part where we deny trauma.

I sat in the bathtub for what felt like hours before Stiles opened the bathroom door and grabbed a towel. He reached for my hand and pulled me out of the water, wrapping the towel around my fragile body and helped me out of the tub.