Ah yes, the ever-helpful “shouldn’t you be over this by now?” brigade. As if grief is some kind of flu you just shake off after a few weeks of rest and hydration.
Here’s the thing—grief doesn’t come with a deadline. There’s no magic day where you wake up, stretch, and say, “Welp, that was fun. Time to move on!” That’s not how love works, and it’s certainly not how loss works.
People who say you should be “over it” are really just uncomfortable with the fact that grief doesn’t have an off-switch. They’d like you to be fine because it makes them feel better. But that’s their problem, not yours.
The truth? You don’t “get over” losing someone you love. You learn to live with it. Some days, that weight feels manageable. Other days, it knocks the wind out of you. And that’s normal. That’s human. That’s love refusing to be forgotten.
So the next time someone suggests you should be “over it,” you have my full permission to raise an eyebrow, take a slow sip of your coffee, and say:
“Oh, am I grieving incorrectly? My apologies. I must have missed the deadline.”
And then go right on feeling exactly how you feel. Because your grief is yours. No one else gets to put a timer on it.
You have given words to those that grieve. It is only thru loss, that one comes to understand how others feel.