In the last few months, I’ve spent a good amount of time talking with my best friends, sharing my feelings, conversations and situations that have arisen with family and relatives (both helpful and destructive), and things I have been doing to give myself an outlet for my emotions and to help myself cope. It’s strange, though, how two people can judge your healing process in two very different and opposing ways.

I’ve seen my best friend in New York at least once a month since Ed left us. Every time I see her, we always debrief on the same things – what I’ve been thinking about, inane situations with my parents and extended family, what I’ve been occupying myself with. In assessing my progression in the last few months, she said to me, “You’re coping really well. You seem a little happier every time I see you.”

Then there’s my best friend in San Francisco, who I saw once in September when I was back home, and spoken on the phone and over Google Hangout with a number of times since July. She seems to think that I am miserable and “the same,” as she told her friend who asked about me, She is urging me constantly to see a therapist, which I am considering but have honestly been putting off.

I tell both of these friends the same things, so how are they both coming to two different conclusions about my grieving “status”?

Ed, how do you think I am doing?