they say there are five stages of grief, but they don't tell you what to do when there is no funeral.
no name.
no timestamp.
no nods and casseroles and "take all the time you need”.
because not all sorrows come with warning labels.
mine crept in without a death. it crept in with a disappearance.
there was no scream, there was no fracture - just one day i looked around and noticed the version of myself that i had been holding for so long… had quietly let go of breath.
he left no note. didn't take his belongings. just slipped out the back of my bones without me noticing.
- (from pinterest)
and i don't know how to describe that to people. how do you describe i've been grieving a self that never had a name?
no one truly prepares you for the loss of what never materialized. the life that remained in you. the dream that grew bigger than its cage.
everyone gets it when someone dies. not when a future dies. not when you have to sit across from a mirror and you're faced with the realization that the person you were going to be - the one you constructed your most silent hopes upon - won't be arriving. not now. perhaps not ever.
some sorrows spin on a loop. mine assumes the mask of who i used to be before the disappointment hardened. before i knew how to wince at good news because it always expects something in return.
you begin to orchestrate your happiness as if you're scared of jinxing it.
you refrain from saying i want out loud.
you apologize each time you laugh too loudly.
and the worst part - you fail to notice that you've gone silent.
this type of mourning doesn't demand sympathy. it only demands that someone acknowledge the emptiness.
but they won't. they'll say you should appreciate it - you still have your health. your employment. your physical form.
they don't know about the graveyards within us. they don't know about the piece of you that continues to lay flowers for what you never got to experience.
i miss the boy i once was.
the one who still had faith that humans always meant it when they said forever.
the one who could enter a room and not look around it for doors.
the one who did not think his presence was an intrusion.
god, i miss him like he was somebody i loved and disappointed.
because i did.
there are days i still catch him - fluttering behind my reflection.
a softness in my voice. a skip in my step.
like he's searching to find his way back.
but grief doesn't turn around.
you don't grow back into the person you left behind to live.
and perhaps the worst of it is - that you can't identify what you lost. you can't even bury it. can't give it a name. you just carry it like mist - hugging your perimeters, appearing in places where you should've felt clean.
it's the message you never text. the "i miss you" lodged in your throat. the you that you don't bring on dates because he feels too much.
it's not cinematic. it's not romantic. it's a quiet kind of grieving.
and the world doesn't know what to do with silence.
but here's what i've discovered:
some grief does not want to be healed. it just wants to be heard.
so i'm writing this down - not as a eulogy, but as proof.
that it was there.
that i was there.
that once, there was a part of me who believed in everything.
and he may not be here anymore,
but this - these words -
this is the closest i’ve come to bringing him back.