[LEGALEAGLE]

Originally Posted by Bruinrab

"Your grief is like a house. One day you'll be in the room of sorrow and the next you might be in anger."

A humbled divorcée, I can only act as if all this is news to me.

"And oh, denial!" she adds. "That's a room, too — don't forget."

Eventually you have to tell everyone who hasn't heard through the grapevine. Some people get "the whole story" and some just get the abridged "we've separated" version.

THE whole-story people are exhausting. At first it's all relief and adrenaline as you recount the moment you realized the shuttle was breaking apart. But then you are overwhelmed with dread as you come to understand how many whole-story people there are in your life. Still ahead are countless oh-my-gods and I'm-so-sorrys and you-must-be-kiddings. You hear sympathetic and understandable questions coming at you, and your tongue grows thick and unfamiliar forming all those words one more time. You consider a form letter:

I urge myself to find something else I am grateful for but can't. And then I realize there is something.

It's this rawness of spirit, the way the crust of my middle-age shell has been blown off me, and here I am, the real me. I am no longer the person who can pretend everything's O.K. I can no longer think of myself as "safe" or protected. I know now it is up to me to hunt, to gather and to keep shelter warm.

Tell me about it.... one time I told someone to wait a week before i told her the story because i was so exhausted after telling somebody else...but she wanted to hear it *now*