Today my coworker came back from their leave, when i arrived at the store i saw them sitting there in their desk chipping away at the order scheduling and they looked sad but determined to keep on pushing through their pain so i approached them slowly looking from afar with the intention to say some comforting words in regards to what happened… Last Thursday after a long talk with my sister about her relationship and another long talk with my partner about it, well deep into the night i also agreed to talk for a while with one of my current best friends, someone i first got to know through my streams but with who i didn’t really had a real conversation with until like a year later when they asked me for advice with their japanese as they were trying to get a scholarship in japan, we connected in a ton of stuff as not only do we share a lot of interests but also since we’re both extremely sincere people we usually are able to talk without holding anything back which is funny because usually they are really tightly closed to most people (mutual streamer problem i guess), since then we’ve shared a lot together and we both act like each other’s personal unwind buddy even though i also share that with my partner but i feel like as she is such a positive person and she doesn’t really like to dwell in her sad emotions whenever i share those feeling with her i can feel the empathy but not the understanding.
Anyways i was talking to them about what was happening at work and how i felt like i didn’t really know what to say to my coworker. I consider myself a great listener to my loved ones because i really care about what they have to say and i actually put a lot into understanding them as much as i can, i ask a lot of stuff and i ask for explanations on most things in an effort to try to connect their experiences to mine to link at least with the direction of their feelings to mine, but when sad things happen and people need comforting words i am just unable to come up with anything. Whenever i think about what could make someone feel better i end up thinking about what would make me feel better which in turn makes me feel like I’m being egoistic, if i assume that whatever works for me would work for them then i could end up hurting someone somehow. Actually that has already happened a few times and i regret each time it has.
So when i was talking to my friend i brought up some time ago when their grandmother passed and i felt like i couldn’t properly say anything to them, i got scared to say anything and i also felt like whatever i was able to say was never going to be enough to make the weight of the situation at least a little bit lighter so i limited myself to saying “I am here for you, whenever you need me, just tell me and I’ll be there” even thought that has pretty much been the base of our relationship ever since it started. I told my friend that i was sorry for not saying anything better at that time, that i felt that maybe they could have felt that i wasn’t interested in how they felt. Then after hearing me ramble for a while my friend said:
“You are right, at a time like that nothing anyone says is enough to lift you up, but i think just feeling like there’s someone supporting you is enough motivation for after the fact”
So in remembering that when i finally talked to my coworker i said something like “If you needed more time you could have taken it”, and they said “Well, legally i can take about 5 days for things like this”, then i responded “I could have talked to our boss (My mother) about that, people need their time to recover”, they cried a single tear before assuring me that since death comes with so many legal implications she really didn’t really have the time to fall deep into a static state… then i said “Well, i hope you are feeling at least a little bit better now”.
We didn’t really talk much about it after that and genuinely i don’t know if what i said was anything at all, but i hope they feel supported even if just by a tiny little bit.
Also, the fact that their brother died in a violent altercation was merely speculation (My coworker assumed it somehow and told my mother about it) in reality they died of a brain related illness, that doesn’t make it better really, but i feel like one can take even if a tiny spec of solace out of something like that.






