First Person is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines atUntil this year, I wasn’t well acquainted with grief – and I would have preferred to keep it that way.
Grief is messy. Laundry piles up. Dust bunnies colonize. While you’re too busy chasing grief out the back door to care, it’s hard to start healing when your haven has been turned upside down by a selfish roommate with zero regard for order. Once your friends and colleagues haven’t seen your roommate out and about for a while, they start to forget about your new living arrangement. Some think grief has packed up. Others know it’s still lurking and urge you to kick it to the curb.“Take a trip!” they say. Or “A change of scene will do you good!” As if your roommate would let you off the hook that easily.
You begin to see that your roommate is forcing you to deal with your emotions. Grief isn’t just going to slink away, so you’ve got little choice but to acknowledge it. You begin to understand that some of the things you were focusing on weren’t as important as getting to know your roommate. And by consciously prioritizing this relationship, grief is less likely to rear its head at inconvenient times.