The Journey - From Denial to Acceptance

In Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s ground breaking book “On Death and Dying” (1969) and later in her last book “On Grief and Grieving”, she introduced the Kubler-Ross model which describes, in five discrete stages, a process by which people allegedly deal with grief and tragedy, especially when diagnosed with a terminal illness or catastrophic loss; or grieving over the lost of loved ones.

I wonder if these five stages are also applicable when a gay person comes to term with his own sexuality. The five stages are Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. Everybody’s manifestation of the five stages could be different from the others.

I wonder if I have been living in denial since I did not come out to myself until quite late although I have strong sexual emotion towards men. I don’t remember being angry with myself or going through the bargaining stage. Maybe all these three stages were rolled into one as I lived my life, hiding from my feelings and numbing my emotions, like outright denial. I could also be angry with myself by refusing to look at relationship beyond ONS and no-string attached, in a way punishing myself that I don't deserve anything better. I could have bargained by trying to get into marriage and hoping this will let me lead a normal, albeit unhappy, life like a heterosexual male.

I rarely have any bout of depression until I look into my heart, questioning my existence and life intention, dealing with hard and difficult questions related to the purpose of life and sexuality.

• So, what do you plan to do with the rest of your life? asked Gabriel.
• I am dumb founded. I could only murmur meekly, “I don’t know.”

It is definitely pointless to dwell in the past. What has happened cannot be undone. And life moves on. Question is: Have I finally, and fully, arrived at the acceptance stage?