The Blobs

There was a computer game I played in the early 2000s. I don't even remember its name anymore. But I remember the screen: little colored blobs with blinking eyes, floating around, bumping into each other. When two of the same color touched, they'd merge into a bigger blob and rise slowly to the top. That's it. That was the whole game.

I've been thinking about it lately as a metaphor for grief.

Here's what I mean: You let a little grief start to surface. Something small, maybe. Something recent—a loss you're ready to touch, an ending you've finally given yourself permission to feel. And it doesn't stay small. Older grief sees the opening. Grief you thought you'd already dealt with. Grief you processed years ago, or thought you had. Grief that's been floating quietly somewhere below the surface, waiting.

It glosses on. Merges. Rises too.

Suddenly you're not crying about the thing you thought you were crying about. Or you are, but you're also crying about something from five years ago, ten years ago, something that surprised you by still being there. That is not a malfunction. That is just how grief works.

One grief makes room for the others waiting underneath. They recognize each other. They were always the same color.

We tend to think of grief as something we do once and finish. You lose something, you feel it, you process it, you move on. Neat. Linear. Done. But grief doesn't work that way. It isn't a task to complete. It's more like those blobs—floating, waiting, merging when conditions are right. Rising when something finally makes enough room.

And the thing that makes room is usually another grief.

I was sitting with someone recently who was experiencing this. Letting one loss surface, and finding, to their surprise, that it brought others with it. Older ones. Ones they thought they'd already set down. There's a particular kind of disorientation that comes with that. I thought I was done with this. Why is this still here? What does it mean that I'm feeling this again?

It doesn't mean anything is wrong. It means grief is doing what grief does. It means you made enough space for it to move. That's not a setback. That's actually the work.

If you've ever started crying about one thing and ended up somewhere else entirely — somewhere older, somewhere you didn't expect — you're not broken.

You're not doing it wrong.

You just made enough room for the others to rise.

If grief keeps surprising you — if it shows up bigger than you expected or older than you thought — that's worth bringing into a room with someone who can sit with you in it. That's exactly what therapy is for.