Did it really hurt that bad?

He said it to me over lunch. The answers should be obvious. Hell yes it did. Why else would anyone make such a big deal of pain, tragedy, grief etc. It hurts. Now wait... he says to me. Maybe it was just me making a much bigger deal out of something that it deserved. Somehow the idea of disproportionate response to a painful stimuli takes root. And at first it offends me that anyone could suggest minimizing their own or someone else's emotional response to a given set of facts. But on the flip side we do it all the time. At least to other people... rarely for any self analytical purpose. What we are quick to judge in another we are often sluggish to see in ourselves.

We shake our heads in wonder when grieving families create shrines to dead children. We wonder why they can't move on. People make mention of mental status when someone can't focus beyond their own immediate distress and find ways to cope. We're not seeing the reason for all the drama... why do you?

And then we - the oh so superior crowd - go about medicating ourselves with alcohol, memories, and stories and sometimes just plain mindnumbing silence that serve only to kill our pain and at the same time recapture a little of what we feel we have lost. We spend quality time we can't afford to waste on diversionary tactics that hopefully no one else notices. A hand carefully placed to cover up a scar in public, a move to a new city so we don't have to face the pain of reliving hurtful memories in the grocery store, the post office, a public park. You get the picture.

So you tell me... do we all just hide away the parts of us we need most to protect, or do we react to our own grief in ways that are disproportionate to the situation in the first place?

And yes baby... it did hurt that much.