All three at once

What this means

Your answers are near the top of all three parts of this check. The missing is constant, the decision is still being replayed, and you are carrying it without much help. That is a great deal to hold, and the honest thing to say is that it is heavy, not that it is wrong.

Start with what the number is not. It is not a diagnosis. It is not proof you are grieving badly, and it is not a comment on how long it has been. Some of these losses are very large. An animal who was in every hour of your day for a decade. An animal you got through a divorce with, or an illness, or a year you do not talk about. An animal whose ending you had to choose and then be present for. Losses like that answer these questions this way, and none of it means you are doing grief incorrectly.

What a score here does say is that the three parts are feeding each other. The ache makes the decision harder to look at. The guilt makes the ache feel deserved, which makes it harder to ask for anything. Having nobody treat the loss as real takes away the people who would otherwise carry some of the weight. That loop is the reason this is worth treating as something to get help with rather than something to wait out.

What to do next

Bring in one more person. Not because you cannot manage this, but because this shape of grief reliably improves with help and reliably does not improve alone. A therapist who works with bereavement is one door, and pet loss is squarely inside what that means. A pet loss support group, online or through a vet practice, is the other, and it is often the faster relief because the qualifier disappears in that room.

If that is beyond you this week, make the step smaller rather than skipping it. Tell one person the real state of things, in plain words, once.

Hold the ordinary floor while you do. Roughly the same time out of bed, one real meal, daylight, and something in the hours that used to be theirs. Not as a cure. As the ground the rest of it needs.

If sleep has been broken for weeks, or eating has changed and stayed changed, see a doctor. Not because grief is an illness, but because a body running on empty makes all of this heavier, and that part is treatable.

One more thing, said plainly. If you have been having thoughts of not wanting to be here, that happens in this kind of grief more often than people admit, and it is not something to sit with quietly. Tell a doctor, a therapist or someone close to you today rather than waiting to see whether it passes.