More Mortality

I am working through grief over my situation. I looked up the five stages of grief just now, and I'm puzzled. I seem to have gone right to the depression stage, skipping over denial, anger and bargaining. It's tricky for me because I'm chronically depressed anyway. But I think I can rationalize skipping the first three steps.

Denial: I have had a morbid imagination from my early days. It has gotten to be more of a problem later in my life. The point is I'm all too willing to believe that catastrophe awaits me in the near future. Now I have a solid basis for that worry, I'm not surprised that I believed the threat immediately.

Anger: I've had problems with anger in the past. Anger at my ex-wife, my family, my friends. One of the reasons I have isolated myself is to avoid hurting myself and others with my anger. So my reflex is to suppress angry feelings. Lately, I've lost the luxury of getting angry: it makes me very ill. Also, the question arises: who should I be angry at? On the other hand maybe that's where the denial comes in. I'm not denying my mortality risk, but maybe I am denying my anger at the situation.

Bargaining: with who? I have seen miracles, but they have been of the nature of unexpected and unaccountable kindness and forgiveness. I think these could have a naturalistic explanation without diminishing their significance. I'm agnostic in my religious beliefs. I'm dubious about appealing to a supernatural entity for deliverance from the common fate of mankind, even if I think it's coming too soon in my case.

What really bothers me is the idea that I will die without love. That gets me weeping every time I think about it. I don't know how to escape that fate. I haven't had a good hug in 13 years and I feel very, very sorry for myself about it. Aside from gradually losing my capacity to have sex, I feel like I'm losing the stamina to reach out to others. That makes it hard to move on to acceptance.

I don't know, maybe I'll pull a Dylan Thomas at the end. (The rage part, not the drunken death in a gutter.)