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Photograph: Eric Pancer/Flickr

The 5 stages of grief during a CTA delay

Written by
Chris Bourg
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In 1969, Swiss psychiatrist and University of Chicago medical instructor Elisabeth Kübler-Ross introduced her "Five Stages of Grief" model to explain how people behave when faced with either their own impending death or that of a loved one. Her model can also be applied to other situations when an individual suffers a form of loss or personal tragedy, no matter how minor it is. Today we take that model and apply it an unfortunate yet all-too-familiar occurrence in many Chicagoan's lives: a CTA delay. Not everyone will experience these stages in the exact order listed below, and others may skip over some of them entirely, but the coping process tends to follow a similar pattern.

Denial: As your train slowly halts to a stop in the middle of the tracks, you refuse to acknowledge the reality of the situation at hand. You convince yourself that the train just needs to slow down on this stretch of the tracks and that it'll start moving again at full speed any second. After all, there's no way you're going have to sit in a delay for the third time this week, right? But as we all know, denial ain't just a river in Egypt. You can tell yourself all the lies you want, but the fact is you're going to be stuck on this train for a while.

Anger: Once you realize you can no longer cling to the false hope of your train starting back up soon, denial turns to incredulity, which quickly turns into full-blown anger. You make the @cta Twitter account the object of your scorn, cursing everyone you believe is responsible for this inconvenience in 140 characters or less, from the train conductor to Rahm. You lash out at the guy in front of you, whose crappy techno music you can hear clearly blasting through his headphones, yelling that people like him are what's ruining Chicago's public transit system and America in general. You even call your boss to tell him what a moron he is for scheduling a meeting first thing in the morning. Nothing and no one is safe from your rampage, and this lousy train delay is all to blame.

Bargaining: The longer the delay goes on, the more desperate you become. And in these desperate times, you find yourself looking toward the heavens to negotiate some kind of deal to get this train moving. You plead that you will do anything it takes, whether it's treating the poor intern who runs the @cta Twitter account nicer or vowing to turn yourself into a paragon of train etiquette like the CTA's most recent ad campaign says, just to get this godforsaken train started again.

Depression: Once you realize bargaining is futile, depression begins to sink in. As you stare out the window and look into the bleak landscape of a dreary Chicago day, you begin to question everything you've ever known. You ask yourself what the point of going anywhere is if you're just going to get stuck like you are now. You compare your idle train to your dead-end job you can't even get to. Things turn truly grim when you start to entertain the thought of moving out to the suburbs so you can drive everywhere. You've hit an all-time low. It's okay to cry if you need to.

Acceptance: After taking some time to reflect on your current state, you start to accept your fate. You're stuck on this train, and you can't do anything about it. Instead of moping in your seat, you make the most of the experience and try to make it as enjoyable as possible for yourself and everyone else. Sure, being in a delay sucks, but that's part of life, and it's not like you'll be here forever (knock on wood).

Then, when the train starts back up, you forget about everything you just went through and resume your normal routine of complaining about every inconvenience you experience on a daily basis. It's the circle of life!

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