three years, thereabouts, running the emotional gamut

*hugs you back* It's like you undergo some life-changing torture mechanism.

so much better than trying to pretend everything was fine around the people who were uncomfortable if I let on that I was, you know, grieving

Yeah, I smell you, Fred. I found it exhausting trying to communicate from the other side of the wall. And it was a state of being, so it was always, until I felt like a walking Tarot card, the one with the skeleton on it.