We interrupt rationality

This past few days I learned something.  I learned that grief is both sneaky and rapacious.  That it is an ambush predator that lounges just below the surface of day to day life and waits.  It waits for that moment when you drop  your guard.  It waits for that one fraction of a second where you start to think that you are getting a handle on the situation and you relax.

Then it strikes, like an crocodile on a zebra.  The attack is not gentle, or subtle.  When it attacks it lunges directly for your heart and latches on like a piranha.  You try everything you can to get it loose, you try and decapitated, or drug it or even just ignore it but the harder you try the harder the jaws clamp down.

Suddenly you are taken out of the "maintain an even strain" attitude you have developed like a tourist from his loafer.  You become the drowning man, flailing your arms and screaming irrationally. If someone tries to help  you try and escape the grief by turning on them, pressing their heads beneath the tsunami of pain that is engulfing you.

There is no easy way to get out, other then just coming to your senses and facing the wounds, cleaning them rather than trying to cover them with gauze.  It's never easy but it has to be done and each time this happens you get a little better at it.

The trouble is that each time the grief slips silently below the surface.

...and it waits.