Patton Oswalt

And then you're gonna get to a point where you go, well, I can function, and thankfully, you will be thankful for the fact that you can't feel anything.

That will feel like a relief.

And you'll go, this is how I'll exist.

I can exist at this point, and that's how I was.

I'm like, I'm just gonna take care of my daughter, and I don't need to feel anything.

And then they said, and despite all of that, you will feel joy and hope and love again.

You don't know when it's gonna happen, but when it happens, run at it, like go run at it.

It's there for a reason.

you know there were people in my group that are like i i remarried six months after my spouse died and everyone judged me for it and there's people going i remarried eight years after my spouse died and everyone judged me for it so there's so get all that out of your head it doesn't matter you know there's gonna there you're not you're not grieving to make them comfortable you're not recovering to make them feel comfortable you have to live whatever life is being put in front of you and i met this

genuinely extraordinary woman that I don't think I would have realized is as extraordinary as she is if I hadn't been in love with and spent all those years with Michelle to really show me what extraordinary in a person means, you know?

So there was almost like that was the gift from her.

That was the one

gift was losing her having that torn away from me so horribly but in a way the tearing away burned the memory of what a truly amazing person looks and feels and acts like and I was able to recognize it when it came around again

I felt numb for like half a year, just nothing.

And before that were a couple of months of just, you know, April, April, May, most, some of June was just, it's not pain, it's,

C.S.

Lewis put this so well, grief feels like terror.

I was in terror 24 hours a day.

I was terrified of everything.

Terror.