I never understood how emotionaly illiterate I was, until my dad died. I took over responsibility for his funeral, because my mom couldn’t cope and my siblings are all younger. And I was fine for a few months, until I was just triggered by some paperwork that needed to be taken care of. I was missing some papers, and I just started crying because I was tired and frustrated, but then it got so terrible I was just lying in bed and continued crying and staring at the walls for three days, I couldn’t get up and also had my first panic attack because I got scared and couldn’t understand what was happening to me. Luckily for me, I had a very supportive work environment and a boyfriend, who immediately gave me contacts of different therapists, so after just a week, I started seeing a mental health expert. This experience taught me that you really need to give yourself space to feel the emotions and not bottle them up, because they’re just going to come up at some point and really jeopardize your mental health.