Dear Grief

Dear Grief,

I expected better from you.

And I know how ridiculous that sounds considering who you are, but we’ve known each other for a long time.

Hell, We practically grew up together.

You were there when I was too young to understand why people could be here one day and gone the next. Back then, I didn’t know your name. I just knew the emptiness you left behind. I knew adults cried differently when you were around. I knew houses got quieter. I knew people spoke in softer voices and hugged a little longer

Eventually, I figured you out.

Or at least I thought I did.

We had a pattern.

You would show up when someone left this earth. Sometimes expected. Sometimes without warning. You’d walk through the door without knocking, drop your bags in the middle of my life and stay for however long you pleased.

I hated you for it.

But I understood.

Someone was here. Then they weren’t.

And you were what was left behind.

That was our arrangement.

So explain this to me.

What am I supposed to do with this?

Because nobody died this time.

There was no phone call.

No funeral.

No obituary.

No flowers or covered dishes arriving at the house.

There isn’t a grave I can visit when I miss what used to be.

The person I’m grieving is still waking up every morning. Still eating. Still laughing. Still making plans. Still existing somewhere underneath the same sky as me.

So why are you here?

Why does losing someone who is still alive feel so much like death?

I expected better from you, Grief.

You and I had our rules.

You came for the dead.

I mourned them.

And eventually, somehow, I learned how to carry their absence.

But this?

This is cruel.

Because there is something uniquely painful about missing someone you technically haven’t lost.

How do you explain that kind of grief to people?

How do you tell someone that you miss a person you could probably call?

How do you explain that sometimes love remains long after a relationship has become impossible?

How do you mourn memories when the other person is still alive to remember them too?

There are moments when I think about who we used to be, and for a second, everything feels untouched.

Childhood.

Laughter.

Inside jokes.

A history that existed before life became complicated.

Before disappointment.

Before hurt.

Before two people who came from the same beginning somehow ended up standing so far apart.

And then you tap me on the shoulder again.

Remember me?

Yes, bitch. I remember you Grief.

I know you well.

Maybe too well.

You’ve sat beside me through enough goodbyes that I recognize you before you even step fully through my door.

But this version of you is different.

There is no finality here.

Death has always been brutally clear. However unfair, however devastating, it leaves no negotiation. Eventually, the heart is forced to understand what the mind already knows.

They are gone.

But estrangement leaves the door cracked just enough for hope to keep wandering through it.

Maybe one day.

Maybe they’ll call.

Maybe I’ll call.

Maybe we’ll become the people we needed each other to be.

Maybe time will soften something that pride, pain, distance, and years could not.

Maybe.

And maybe not.

That’s the part you never taught me.

You taught me how to grieve people who died.

You never taught me how to grieve someone who lived.

So what am I supposed to do with all this love that no longer has anywhere to go?

What do I do with the memories?

What do I do with the version of us that still exists perfectly in my head?

What do I do when I miss someone and still know that distance is necessary?

Maybe that’s why you’ve come back.

Not because someone died.

But because something did.

A relationship.

An expectation.

A future I assumed would always exist simply because there was a past that did.

Maybe I’ve spent all these years misunderstanding you.

Maybe you were never only about death.

Maybe you arrive whenever love has to learn how to exist in the absence of what it once had.

Let’s be clear. I still don’t like you.

After all these years, I don’t think we’re ever going to be those kinds of friends.

But I know you.

And apparently, you know me too.

So I suppose we’ll sit together again.

I won’t ask you to make me stop loving the people I have lost. I’ve learned by now that isn’t what you do.

And I won’t confuse missing someone with an instruction to return to them.

I’ll just let myself miss what was.

I’ll let myself grieve what should have been.

I’ll let the memories be good when they were good, without forcing them to rewrite what came afterward.

And eventually, when you’re ready, you’ll get a little quieter.

You always do.

Until then, you have my permission to stay.

But don’t get comfortable.

We’ve been doing this since childhood…You know the pattern.