Maybe I’m a terrible person. If I am, it’s not of much consequence right now. Not when I’m struggling just to breathe.

My general attitude shifts between anger, sadness, hopelessness, and unadulterated anxiety. But most often, anger. I’m filled with hostility towards just about everything. Facebook posts of people enjoying time with their parents (or god forbid, grandparents). Celebrations of illnesses that have been overcome.  The grief of people who have lost a family member over the age of 80. Happy people.

I’m going to take a moment to be self-indulgent and throw myself a pity party. Since kindergarten, I’ve lost three great-grandparents, a great aunt and uncle, cousins, two grandparents, a beloved pet, and of course, my mom. Among these are immense, life-changing,  PTSD-inducing losses. Many died much too young, of accidents or disease. Keep in mind that this is just on one side of my family, since I never really knew my dad’s side. In the midst of this, there were also untold illnesses and hospital visits, many of which vastly changed the way my family lived and operated on a daily basis. All of this combined to create an ever-present anxiety, a very real fear that every phone call is one of *those* phone calls, that every goodbye is the last.

Then, of course, there have been other anger and grief-inducing  losses. \ But that’s for another time.

Why do some of us seem to face loss so constantly and so thoroughly? Sure, we all have our struggles and demons. I know that. But it’s hard to equate the two when others’ challenges can seem so trivial…