my grief observed

"No one ever told me grief so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep swallowing.
At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. "
~A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis~

Grief. It's the moment of disbelief and, as Lewis points out, something close to fear. It's the moment where you think, "Dear God, it can't be true." The moment when your mind goes utterly, completely and totally blank. It's the half second between acceptance and rejection, when you pray the news you heard is a really, really bad joke because you'd rather forgive someone of their morbidity than actually have to believe the devastating news. It's the moment between breaths, after you gasp in shock and then exhale in a scream. It's moment when time stops. And you pray like hell it never starts again.
But it does. And then you realize those agonizing moments that felt like eternity were mere seconds. The real pain is only just about to begin.