I’m not trained for trauma. My first reaction is sadness, quickly followed by utter despair. The essence of grief is being swallowed whole. The world falls away and one throbbing pain fills all of reality. I feel other people’s grief acutely. It reaches out like a feather bed that wants to suffocate me. Tender hands choking off any cheer, a gentle reminder that death will always be there. Sometimes I think the entire human condition is a struggle to understand pieces we lose along the way. A full understanding of loss is rarely achieved willingly.

The worst traumas are what we don’t see coming. A chance to prepare for the end of something affords minimal comfort in an impossible situation. If nothing else, impending doom forces you to care a lot less about what other people think. A blessing in any form. Happiness involves living at full volume unapologetically. Figuring out how to do it without burning out is the real challenge. Anyone can live loudly once a year or so. Most call it their birthday. It’s a much steeper challenge when you are true to yourself every day. Exhaustion alone takes down most idealists.

I haven’t learned to do anything better than anyone else but I’m pretty good at living. Assured of my own existence I’ve moved on to finding other real people in my vicinity. It’s slow going in a city where I started out alone. Many times I’ve questioned my standards and whether quality is even worth waiting for. So many people are willing to fake friendships after they find out what you have to offer them. My approach is to be patient, wait for true friends to reveal themselves. There are other good people out there, they just might not be ready to make friends yet. I wasn’t for a very long time.