A good amount of the time, you are allowed to be the “fine, just fine” that you want to be, but for the nature of healthiness, for the justice of fairness, you have to feel something. And when you finally do, what you feel will be much much worse.
Our parents and loved ones will die, and they might die on their birthdays, in a cold hospital. You will have set your alarm the night before and will turn it off in the morning because it won’t matter anymore. Nothing will matter except that you won’t remember the last conversation you had with them.
It’s the peeling paint on the garage from no primer, the peeling skin on your feet from no shoes. It’s laying in your driveway with nothing to do. It’s your first concussion, your first stitches, breaks, bruises.