I've been thinking all evening about this, about grief, about how it evolves a person in a completely different direction than before the loss. Two trains of thought: first, I wonder how much criminal activity has its roots in grief...as MA says, all loss is grief...so during our early lives, it's possible to encounter loss in various ways...loss of a parent - physically through divorce or death, or emotionally through the arrival of a sibling or a myriad of other ways; loss of a sibling, loss of stability, loss of a home, loss of lifestyle...loss of childhood through abuse of any kind...I wonder, if a child struggles with enough loss in those years, I wonder if it completely changes the direction of that child's life/mindset/neediness/behavior patterns...which then translates into various neurosis, psychosis, anger and trust issues - which is fodder for lashing out through criminal activity (other ways to lash out as well, but this was the direction of my thinking, sort of tying it into the whole discussion on how suffering is the result of a myriad of choices that impact on our/other people's lives).

My second train of thought was more inward. It's not my intention to always drag my grief into every conversation here. And yet, it leaks out. No matter how far along this road I think I've come, the grief is still the defining undercurrent in my life. Everything comes back to the grief. There is another discussion in the forums about the old days...as I read through the list, it made me cry...I can't go there, I can't think about the old days, because it reminds me of how much I've lost, how everyone who was vital to me back then is gone now. It still hurts. And I couldn't participate in that discussion because it would have been too sad and i didn't want to pull the conversation down by yet again injecting the issue of grief into it. Everything I read, everything I try to talk about here always drills me down to the grief. I can't seem to keep it out of the conversations. It has completely changed my life and soul and nothing is or ever will be the same as "before". I'm moving on, yet, it's only a picture, a word, a smell, a thought, a memory away...no topic, no conversation, nothing is exempt from those intricate tendrils of grief.