One of my friends, a very sensitive person with a history of addictions (in recovery for years now), who experienced a great variety of losses in her life including a recent one, expressed it this way a few days ago: "I'm trying to keep things in perspective, but any loss seems to trigger this feeling of staring into an abyss, of being alone and disconnected and lonely forever".
I do not really relate to this eternal and absolute loneliness anymore the way I used to. There were times in my life in the past when it would be a very fitting description and I spent way too much time delving into it. Today, I recognize the remnants of that reaction in me: my mind is flooded by these dark, pessimistic thoughts that I used to perceive as interesting philosophical ideas about life and death and everything in between... and then the thought that I should be over these things by now, can't just indulge in them over and over and over again, what is the point? That this type of thinking and feeling state is a defense: endlessly intellectualizing what cannot truly be put into words or into perspective, or perhaps cannot even be understood in any useful form. So I try to keep myself from escaping into those thoughts and philosophies (that were my "safe haven" for so long, to numb me really) now. Instead, I am trying to see and feel it for what it is, without transforming and conceptualizing. It's really not easy even with what, I believe, is a considerable level of awareness now.
Anyhow, I've just decided that I will try to compartmentalize these states: let myself dive into these realms of thoughts and feelings today, as I have nothing else to do, but won't allow the same space to them from tomorrow again otherwise it's just the same old current I know far too well already; the same old "undertow" that led me into escaping, into obsessive thoughts and emotions, into addictions. But I think it's good to give them a bit of limited space at times, in the moment.