The you that lives beyond the sun
We say “good grief” when we’re irritated.
When we’re overwhelmed.
When something feels like too much.
It’s a dismissal. A shorthand. A way to move past what we don’t want to stay with.
That’s fitting—because that’s exactly how my brain functions in our culture.
The word itself shuts people down. It reads as emo, catastrophic, sentimental, or irrelevant. People hear it and think: this isn’t me, this is too much, this is for someone else.
So my brain is most often avoided.
And in that avoidance, we misread what’s actually happening in people’s lives.
Most people aren’t experiencing my brain in the way culture expects them to.
They’re not collapsed.
They’re not falling apart.
They’re functioning.
Working.
Parenting.
Creating.
Showing up.
Making decisions.
Carrying responsibility.
And they’re tired in a way that rest doesn’t touch.
My brain doesn’t always look like tears and darkness.
It often looks like over-functioning.
Like holding it together.
Like being “fine.”
Because my brain isn’t just about death.
It’s about change.
Loss of expectations.
Loss of identity.
Loss of imagined futures.
Loss of safety.
Loss of belonging.
Loss of the version of yourself you thought you’d be.
My brain stays in the body long after the story “ends.”
It shows up in irritability.
In numbness.
In hyper-independence.
In control.
In burnout.
In silence.
Not because people are broken.
Because my brain is unfinished business.
We don’t teach people how to be with my brain.
We teach them how to move on from it.
And when something can’t be moved on from, it becomes background noise in the nervous system —
a low hum of exhaustion, vigilance, or disconnection that no amount of productivity can quiet.
This is why so many people feel “off” without knowing why.
This is why so many high-functioning people are secretly depleted.
This is why my brain doesn’t disappear when life looks “good.”
My brain isn’t a phase.
It’s a companion to change.
And change is constant.
Good grief isn’t sarcastic.
It’s accurate.
My brain is part of being alive, attached, and human.
The problem isn’t my brain.
The problem is pretending it’s rare.
So my brain is feeling exhausted.
Not because life is falling apart,
but because I’m processing something meaningful that changed.
So my brain is feeling exhausted
from carrying what didn’t get a place to land.
So my brain is feeling exhausted
even while everything still looks “fine.”
So my brain is feeling exhausted
because connection leaves can take time to understand what it means.
So my brain is feeling exhausted
and that doesn’t mean anything is wrong with me as a human.
It means something mattered.