I heard an analogy ago from a grief counselor that's stuck with me

Just going along with the general way we think of mental illness (including acute mental distress, "mental injury") in moral terms the way we don't with physical illness or injury

Why do we make these determinations of how much you're "allowed" to be hurt by something in the emotional or psychological sense

When we all know in the physical world it's a matter of sheer dumb luck

Why is it a referendum on how worthy you are as a person

There are people who fall out of a damn airplane and their parachute doesn't open and they smash into the ground in an open field, and they live

There are people who slip and fall in the shower and instantly die

It's random, it's all these unknowable factors of physics

There is an *average* length of time it takes to recover from trauma, maybe, but not really a *normal* one

The variance is extreme, and unpredictable

Some people seem to recover very quickly, and are "back on their feet" in a month

Some people *never* recover

Either one is ok

People in Group A aren't unfeeling bastards who never loved the person they lost

And people in Group B aren't delicate snowflakes who don't deserve to be coddled

You never know what kind of reaction you'll have until it's your body hitting the ground