I wrote this to Ross.

I got your e-mail early today. Thanks a bunch :) I really appreciate you letting me know you were alright. I worry... :) And miss you.

I spoke to a grief councellor today. I feel a small burden lifted off of my shoulders. I had debated over whether or not to talk to you about this through your trip or not, but I thought that if you came home and found out I had been in this agony and grief and didn't tell you the whole time it would make you feel bad. So I chose this route and I hope it was the right one.

I talked to her a lot about my life. I don't want to talk all about it in an e-mail and there isn't enough time on the phone, but there are certain things that she helped me realize.
1. I'm not crazy.
2. I'm not starting to grieve form square one.
3. My bad reaction(s) to your trip and every other seemingly small-type thing are not abnormal for everything that I've been through (Mom dying, grandma-surrogate mother dying one year after, father with substance abuse problem and living with fear of his suicide, never having gone to councelling and now my father's pre-cancerous cells).
4. I'm going to grieve in a process for the rest of my life; that is, I did finish grieving as a teenager. I'm now grieving as a young adult.
5. Basically I'm oversensitive to everything in the early stages of my new grieving process, and it's not only normal but it's expected.

I'm going to continue going/calling. I wrote you a letter before I called and I mailed it to your dad's. When you get back I want you to be able to see the process I'm going through while you're gone. There's only so much you can get from me overseas.

I know you're probably concerned about me. I know you're likely worried you don't know what to say to me about this. I outlined things in the letter that you can do to help me; easy things that common sense would tell you to do anyway, but in the face of grief you would sometimes question because you don't understand what the person is feeling.

I was afraid that this would happen to me everytime you went away. That scared me. I'm still apprehensive, but I'm feeling more confident that I can work through this. Know I would never ask you to stop travelling. I want you to do everything that makes you happy. I want you to try stuff out, learn things, grow as a person, become more than you are. If you think travelling will help you do that then that is what I want for you. It was never what I wanted, to put a negative cast on your trip. I was just beginning something painful I didn't yet understand and couldn't handle it. I was hiding it from everyone.

Well, that stops now. I'm going to be open about this. I'm going to be out about it. And I'm going to tell people when I need them, including you. I want you to be able to read me, because I know you want me to be happy and you want to help me when I need it. So I'll tell you. No more feeling guilty about not feeling okay.

Wow, this e-mail is a monster. But a good monster. It felt good to write. I think I've started to work on me. Please take any over-reactions I may have in the remainder of this trip (and for a while when you get back) with a grain of salt and please don't think any less of me when it happens... It's part of the whole process. Just be aware that I'm going to do my best.

I love you.

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