The Five Stages I Thought I Had to “Finish”

When Dustin died, I kept reading the same page on the five stages of grief again and again. I was trying to understand what was happening inside me. My emotions felt out of order, and I believed grief was something you moved through step by step until you reached the end.

But grief isn’t linear. It doesn’t behave.

The stages don’t tell you what to do. They explain what you might feel. You can be in several stages at once. You can drift forward and backward. You can feel acceptance in the morning and fall into bargaining that night.

None of this means you are doing it wrong.
It means you are grieving.

Below is what each stage actually looked like for me.

Denial

Denial isn’t ignoring the truth. It’s the mind protecting you from what feels too surreal to accept all at once.

For me, denial felt like:

The constant thought, “How can this be”
“How could this have happened”
Feeling disconnected from the reality that they were gone
Moving through the world like everything was muted or unreal
Replaying the hours and days before the loss
Searching for what I missed
Wondering if I misunderstood something
Looking for answers that might make the story make sense

Denial slows the truth down so you can survive it. It gives you only what you can absorb in small pieces. It’s not disconnection from your loved one. It’s disconnection from a reality that feels impossible.

Anger

Anger in grief isn’t always loud. It can be quiet, heavy, or inward.

My anger showed up as:

Irritation at things that normally wouldn’t bother me
A sense of unfairness that sat in my chest
Restlessness without a clear source
A pressure that had nowhere to go

Anger is the body’s protest against a world that changed without your permission. It’s the recognition of how much was taken.

Bargaining

Bargaining was the stage that pulled me in the deepest. It showed up mostly at night.

My bargaining sounded like:

If I had done more
If I had said something more or something different
If I had reached out one more time
If I had taken more control

It’s also where the thought appears: “I don’t know how to go on without them.”

Bargaining is the mind trying to rewrite the story so the ending is different. It’s the place where longing lives. It’s the attempt to regain control in a world where you suddenly have none.

Guilt (A Stage That Deserves Its Own Name)

Guilt weaves through grief in ways the classic five stages don’t describe.

There were two kinds for me:

1. The guilt of feeling like I didn’t do enough
I replayed conversations, moments, and decisions. I searched for signs I might have missed. I wondered why I didn’t recognize something sooner. Guilt turned every memory into a question mark.

2. The guilt of feeling any joy
After Dustin died, joy felt wrong. Smiling felt like betrayal. Any moment of lightness felt like moving on or leaving him behind. I didn’t understand yet that grief and joy can exist together. I didn’t know joy doesn’t erase love.

Guilt isn’t logic. It’s the heart looking for somewhere to place the pain.

Depression

Depression in grief is the weight of reality settling in. It’s not the clinical definition. It’s the emotional exhaustion of understanding what happened.

My depression felt like:

Emptiness
Feeling drained
Waking up with the loss already present before I opened my eyes
Losing interest in things that normally grounded me

This was the stage where the permanence was becoming real. Not all at once, but slowly, in pieces.

Acceptance

Acceptance is not being ok. It isn’t moving on. It’s learning how to carry what happened.

Acceptance felt like:

Letting grief exist instead of fighting it
Allowing small moments of peace without guilt
Understanding that the love stays even though life has changed
Learning to live around the space that will always be empty

Acceptance doesn’t erase the other stages. It doesn’t mean you stop cycling through them. They simply become less intense over time.

Acceptance is not an ending. It’s a way forward.

What I Know Now

I’m still cycling through these stages. They don’t finish. They don’t close. They shift. They soften. They return in new shapes.

Because of losing Dustin, I understand the stages differently now. They aren’t steps. They aren’t a checklist. They’re more like a looping pattern. Maybe not even a circle. More like a squiggly line that doubles back on itself.

The stages give language to what you feel so you don’t think you’re losing your mind. They help you understand that grief has patterns, even when your emotions feel chaotic.

Grief isn’t something you get past.
It’s something you learn to live with.
It becomes part of you in a quiet, steady way that changes how you move through the world.

Understanding that has helped me breathe again, even while the grief is still here.