100 Words About: The Guilt of Gratitude

I have a stupid amount of things to be grateful for, and for most of them I'm grateful with my whole heart, but there is an uglier kind of gratitude that plagues me this Thanksgiving.

I lost someone very dear to me this year, but for all of my personal pain, I feel like I can't show it as much. He wasn't my husband, my father or my son, my sibling or my best friend. What right do I have to be miserable?

But worse than that is the guilt of gratitude, because I can't help but be grateful that it wasn't my parent, or my sibling, or gods-forbid my husband.

My head says it's not wrong to be grateful that it wasn't me. But my heart calls my head a liar.