A whinge about Mourning

I hate mourning.
I hate hurting and feeling vulnerable and a year later still feeling like the walking dead.
A hundred years ago, when you lost someone from your family, you were expected to grieve. You wore black for a year and were expected to wander around sobbing wretchedly and generally being pretty useless to society for that whole period of time. No one expected you to cope. No one expected you to function.
And no one expected you to be happy.

Nowadays it's different.

There's no real space for grieving. You have maybe a few days off work, have a decent funeral and wake, and then basically, that's it. You go back to work, wearing the same clothes as before, and are expected to pretty much get on with it. Your close friends will probably be supportive at first, listen to you tell stories about your lost person, let you cry on their shoulder...but after a few months they begin to get sick of it.
And you're left trying to function feeling like the walking wounded.
On the outside, there's no visible sign of the empty black hole you are carrying round with you.
Esp if you are one of those people who doesn't go visibly to pieces.
And it sucks. Big time.
Now when you've moved to a new place to get a way from it all, funnily enough it's even worse. While you are surrounded by bright new things, inside you're not. And meeting new people is, well, not exactly easy.
I mean, you want to show them you're lovely bright and bubbly side, so they'll actually like you and you can make new friends, but you have no idea where that side of you has gone, cos you haven't been able to find it for a while....
And you go through these empty conversations with fake smiles:

"Hi, how are you?"
"Pretty Good!" (this morning I only cried half of the drive to work.... I managed to stop at half a bottle of vodka last night, and OK, I woke up hysterical at 5 in the morning, but I've been doing that for 12 months now, so I'm almost used to it...)

I think the thing I hate most is not having any control over any of this. I get the idea of the grieving process, the stages you go through etc....the advice from all the experts about not trying to bury your feelings in drugs and denial...but the reality of it is just so darn depressing.

Downton Abbey really gets to me. One of the main characters lost her husband and watching her being so darn elegantly sad, skinny and such a picture of ladylike miserable...with the whole family watching her carefully, trying to shield her from day to day worries and give her the space she needed to just feel like shit in a dignified acceptable manner....
I'm so insanely jealous.
I want maids and caring rich parents who cluck over me, and the space and freedom to waste away while everyone says "Oh the poor thing, see how she's suffering!"
And a cook to try and tempt me with delicate titbits I can pick at while sighing deeply and sniffling into my hand embroidered handkerchief.
And the bitch even has a string of suitors just begging to entice her our of her sadness and run off into a new happy future with them!
Arrggghhh!!!!!!!!

It's just not fair.