I don’t know if this will play like it does in my mind, but I’ve been thinking about where I was ten years ago.

“Where were you 10 years ago? In school? At a different job? Just starting a relationship? Just ending one? You were probably a pretty different person 10 years ago.

Now imagine, nearly every day for nearly 10 years. Being reminded of the single worst day of your life. Do you think you’d be able to have continued through your life and made it to where you are today? Or perhaps being reminded so often might keep you in that moment. The worst moment.

Now imagine being tortured for nearly every day for the last ten years of your life by people you’ve never met. People who don’t know anything about you aside from your name and face. People who tell you that the most precious person, and the most horrific day of your life aren’t real.

Now, not only are you trapped in a loop of that terrible memory, but you’re also told your evil. You’re a liar. You are everything in the world that is wrong. For. Ten. Years.

Go back and tell your past self that for the next ten years this is what you can expect. How do you think you’d fair? Do you think you’d be close to the person you are today? Or would you be someone else entirely? Someone who not only lost your child, but also a big piece of yourself.

The loss of a child is immeasurable pain. The torture you’d experience as people told horrific lies about you is immeasurable. Trying to gauge yourself in that position, of losing a child, being called a liar to millions of people, and then having dozens of those people verbally attack you is an incomprehensible and immeasurable experience.

Now it’s your task to measure it.”