Some moments stretch so long they feel unbearable. Minutes can feel like hours. Hours can feel like days. The waiting alone can feel endless, like time has thickened around you.
At the same time, time can seem to have moved on without you. Days pass, even when it doesn’t feel like you’ve really lived inside them. Things happen. You show up. You do what needs to be done. But it doesn’t feel like forward movement. It feels more like being carried along while part of you stays fixed in place.
In the beginning, shock does more work than you realize. It narrows awareness just enough to keep you moving. Decisions get made. Tasks get done. You function, even when your mind hasn’t fully caught up yet.
When that buffer fades, the disorientation becomes more noticeable. The days don’t move faster. They feel heavier. More exposed. That’s often when people panic, thinking they’ve stopped moving or that something is wrong.
But this isn’t a failure to heal. It’s what happens when shock recedes and grief is finally fully felt. Time stretches and blurs, not because you’re stuck, but because your system is adjusting to a reality it didn’t choose.
This phase doesn’t last forever in the same intensity.
The stretching and blurring change. Not all at once. Not neatly.
But the moments that feel endless become fewer. The days begin to feel like yours again, even if they carry the weight differently.
This isn’t healing in the way people imagine it.
It’s accommodation.
Learning to live inside time that behaves differently now.
And that is still living.
