It’s not that I’m no longer sad. I really am, all the time. But I’ve been able to express my sadness in the past couple of days, and that’s left me with a feeling of extraordinary relief.

Today we had a rose march in memory of everyone we’ve lost, and in protest against the terrorist. Well, it was supposed to be a march. As it turned out, 150,000 people showed up at city hall to partake (and that’s not counting the people who wouldn’t fit there) and it really wasn’t physically possible to pull off. That’s a quarter of the city’s population, all trying to gather in one place. So instead of a march, we got to stand together in a sea of roses, and listen to appeals by the prime minister, the mayor of Oslo and the crown prince, among others, and performances by several great musicians. I was there with Chris. And we sang the national anthem, and what I suppose I could call a youth anthem called “Til ungdommen” or “For the Youths” (doesn’t sound as poetic), and we talked to people we didn’t know, and we cried with them.

When it was all over, we met up with Chris’s boyfriend Martin, who hadn’t been able to reach us in the throng, and we stuck our roses in trees, and laid them down as near the destroyed government building we could get, and we went to have dinner at my favourite Vietnamese restaurant.

I have cried, and I have shared my grief with 150,000 people, and it’s like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I feel an intense relief, and an extreme exhaustion at the same time. I think tonight I may finally sleep well.

EDIT: Nope, scratch that, I’ve still got my irrational and childish “I don’t wanna sleep” thing going. There’s only one option now. More Glee.

Photo by Henrik Lied, shamelessly stolen from NRK.