I wish someone had hugged me when my hamster died

This is a memory coming up from a long, long time ago, and I have no idea why it's coming up right now, but nobody hugged me.

I appreciate that my dad showed my brother and I that the hamster was going to get a decent burial; he was buried in a small shoebox surrounded by the same kind of woodchips that had been in his cage, with a few of his favorite chewing sticks. That did help, and it wasn't about some abstract notion of burial itself being important, it was because I took some comfort from knowing that someone besides me thought this little ball of fur was important.

I didn't think about it much, but I did understand death, and it made me so sad that this happy climbing ball of fur was never going to get to go through mazes or enjoy a nice burrow in the wood chips again. I was 5 and what I really needed was a hug.

Then I inherited another hamster as a teenager from a step sibling who moved out of the house, and a few years later, while I was in high school, that hamster died. I realized she was dead while my best friend was over. I wanted to cry, and I did cry a little. And my friend tried, in some capacity, to be sensitive, as an instinctive reaction to discomfort, if nothing else. But, ultimately he did try to get me to stop by telling me, in a slightly concerned, potentially slightly judgmental tone, "I know it was your pet, but like... It is just a hamster." And my dad buried that hamster in the back yard too, under a pine tree, and yet... I felt like I wasn't even allowed to feel sad the way I'd felt when I was 5.

I was 15, and what I really needed was still a hug.

Traditional masculinity sucks. Grief is just one of many emotions that I rarely felt free to interact with growing up. I should have been free to be emotionally touched by things. It's taken a long time to learn how to access the full range of my emotions in a healthy way, and I'm definitely not done learning yet, although I have come a long way. But, sometimes I still get upset thinking about how needlessly difficult it was to navigate certain aspects of adulthood because I wasn't free to experience and learn those emotions growing up.

I'm 32 now, but to this day, sometimes I am 5, and what I really need is a hug.