Lately I’ve been thinking about how often we’re told that understanding should make loss easier.
As though if we can explain something well enough, we should eventually be able to fold it neatly into the past and move on. The truth is more complicated.
I understand what happened. I understand that people can care deeply about one another and still need fundamentally different things. Understanding has given me clarity, but it hasn’t erased the grief.
What surprises me most is that I don’t miss the grand things. I miss the ordinary moments that somehow never felt ordinary.
The random observation that became a two-hour conversation. The story beneath the story. The feeling that I could mention a city, a song, or a constellation, and someone else would immediately understand that I wasn’t really talking about the city or the song or the stars.
I was talking about wonder. Or hope. Or what it means to be alive.
Those kinds of connections are rare.
And when they end, they leave behind a strange silence. Not an empty silence. More like the silence after a beautiful piece of music ends. The room is still there. Your life is still there. But you can still feel the shape of what was once filling the space.
For a long time, I thought grief meant wanting something back.
Now I think it can also mean honoring something for what it was without asking it to become something it could never be.
Some stories are not meant to become lifetimes.
That doesn’t make them footnotes.
Some stories arrive unexpectedly, change us completely, and then ask us to continue without them.
This was one of those stories.
I still miss it.
I miss it more than I sometimes want to admit.
There are days when I wish reality had been more generous. Days when I wish the ending had been different. Days when I wish there had been a way to keep the connection without abandoning myself in the process.
But wishing does not change what I know.
I know what I needed. I know what was possible. And I know that loving something is not always a reason to remain inside it.
Sometimes the bravest thing we do is let go of something beautiful because it can no longer give us what we need to thrive.
That doesn’t make the love less real.
It doesn’t make the loss less painful.
It simply means that eventually we must stop asking a story to become something it was never capable of being.
The story can matter deeply and still be over.
The loss can be real and still be right.
And perhaps that is one of the hardest forms of wisdom to earn:
To miss something with your whole heart and still know it is time to let it go.
Thank you, yes it is, especially because he still writes about me and us, not on here anymore but on Suno, I had to delete my account so I didn’t listen anymore.
@RebelRaven I wonder if my posts would hurt him. I hope not. That’s not my intention. Writing is my outlet, and he knows that. It’s how we met, through stories shared on EP. He’s not a villain. We just want different things. I don’t know if he’s seen anything I’ve written recently, but if he has I hope he understands. Knowing him as I do, I think he would.
It would be hard to see what he’d write, though, so I can understand you deleting your account there.
Personally I've never understood the whole "letting go" thing. It doesn't make sense to me that we can just all the sudden not care or love or desire (not that you have). I understand the letting go in the sense that we can't be together, we go separate ways, but that is the only way. It's like loss and grief, I can't just 'let it go', it remains a part of me.
I understand. Letting go is really hard. Some days I feel good, like I’ve made my peace with it, like I’ve let him go. Other days, like this week, the ache resurfaces, and the pain is sharp once again. He’ll always be a part of me. As Cookie wrote, he changed my landscape. But I’ve let go of what we could have been, of the friendship and life we could have had if he’d wanted it, too, and I’m letting go of him and what he meant to me. Holding on just hurts too much.
@ChampagneOnIce Ah that makes sense to me. I understand a little better. Ugh, I know how those days and times when it's sharp pain can be. I feel for you. Love and loss does change us. And if you can't be together it is better to try to detach. 🫂💜
@Magenta Thank you. I appreciate your support. It’s hard, but it’s the right thing for both of us. Sometimes doing the right thing hurts the most, though.
I didn’t want to be together as a couple, not in a leaving-our-spouses way. I wanted a friendship that existed without anonymity. He can’t give me that, even after all these years.
