So yesterday made nine months my grandmother’s been gone. I didn’t realize it until after midnight. Which, like last month, I felt bad about. Then I thought, Maybe this means I’m healing.

Nope.

I’ve been chock-full of grief-rage the majority of the day. When I get like that, I try to talk to people as little as possible because I don’t want to go off on anyone. But, one of my co-workers just wouldn’t let me be.

You know those people who, for whatever reason, want a lot of attention from people? Possibly because they didn’t get enough attention when they were kids? Yeah, she’s one of those.

I told her I was experiencing a lot of grief-rage and that two people had already aggravated me. Then she said something to the effect of “You just have to choose to not let two people ruin your day.” I said something to the effect of “No. I’m feeling grief-rage and it needs to come out.”

She said, “Oh, so you wanna be aggravated?” That’s where she messed up. I was minding my Black-ass business and she just had to say something to me because she’s so desperate to be acknowledged. I thought to myself, Oh yeah, I want to be upset. I want the most important person in my life to have died so I can experience the joy of bubbling over with grief-rage whenever my spirit decides to feel that way.

But I didn’t say any of that. What I said was, “Yeah, I do and I don’t need you to tell me how to manage my emotions. Thank you.” I didn’t even give her time to respond, I just walked off. She’s lucky that’s all I said to her.

Every time someone tries to tell me how I should be feeling, it pisses me off. I’m pissed off times ten when someone tries to tell me how I should be grieving.

I was so annoyed, I called my cousin whose mother passed away because I knew she’d understand how I was feeling.

One of the things she mentioned to me during our conversation is that we no longer teach empathy. Not only do we not teach it, but we consider it weakness.

My cousin is so right. I think so many of the ills in our society, be it racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, etc., stem from our lack of empathy. Another problem in our society is we’re so uncomfortable with people expressing deep emotion, we try to shut them down as soon as they begin to express themselves.

The problem with that is expressing our true emotions is part of how we’re going to get free.

I’m nowhere near 94% healed, but I have healed somewhat and I’m proud of that.