The other day I found myself comparing my grief to that of others. As if it wasn’t enough to be grieving, somehow I had decided to use it as an opportunity to judge myself. “Why am I still this sad?” I demanded to know. “BLANK was not this sad when they lost their pet.”
Now while BLANK is a lovely person and good friend, I don’t know why in that moment I decided that BLANK’s was the Grief to which we all should aspire. I also have no idea whether or not BLANK was like this or not. For all I know BLANK sobs uncontrollably to this day. And you know what? That would be fine. I would not judge them for it. But who do I judge? Myself. For not living up to a standard I had completely imagined.
I had a therapist who used to say the mind was a scary place, don’t go in there alone. And indeed, I should not.
However, once I took that minor detour, it did occur to me the answer to my question, “Why am I still this sad?” had a number of answers. And one of them might be that I was immersing myself in this grief because it was a comfortable form of grief to be in. This grief was socially acceptable. It was easy to explain.
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