Grief makes people uncomfortable. There's lots of talk about being tough and carrying on, about what the deceased would want (makes me want to smack people) and how they are in a better place (makes me want to drop a 1000 pound anvil on them). Mostly people rush you past your grief because it is inconvenient, but also because people just piss themselves about death and dying to the point where the actual words are censored.
Fuck me. Really? Have we degenerated as a society that death, dying, sex, illness, and disability are taboo subjects for adults? No shit?
There is a point where respecting other people's feelings becomes being forced to respect an opinion so ridiculous that it's groupthink. Mob rule that erases lived experiences to coddle ignorance, or to manipulate. You, the person who has experienced X are being silenced.
I lost someone I loved deeply. There is a them-shaped hole in my soul from their passing. My poems about grief are a way to process that loss. The antis that want to mute public discourse about topics are infantilizing people who will walk into situations where they or someone else is dying, or grieving, or ill, or disabled and make it not about the person who is suffering and needs support and love, but about their toxic sensitivity and being 'triggered.'
You know, my mother used to pull the same thing. Any time I needed love, support, was facing something where a a kind word would have gone a long way, everything about me suddenly became about her. My mother was a walking aggregation of personality disorders, but predominately a narcissist.
When I was diagnosed with cancer in 2022, I found out who my real ones were. In my first remission, one person came creeping back and told me TO MY FACE that they were triggered by my cancer.
Don't censor what you are going through to coddle ignorance and someone's impression that the sun shines out their ass.
