When your favorite people become strangers overnight.

How do you ever come to terms with that?

I used to believe that I could never.

They used to be my favorite people,

humans whom I adored and had many more memories I wanted to create with.

But somehow,

my world now breathes without them.

They're alive, but what we had is gone.

Everything changed overnight.

How could this be?

For days, I found my heart screaming,

wailing,

desperately clawing against the walls of my chest,

scrambling to reach out to each one of them.

My heart wanted so badly to have things back to what it was,

exactly the way things were, before we became strangers.

The feelings that shot through different parts of my heart

as I grieved for each of them felt so physical.

Some days,

I wondered if my heart would survive this grief.

The pain felt so real;

is this what emotional pain is truly capable of?

Only several months,

(or even years) later,

did I find myself finally feeling free.

I finally understood what I needed to accept,

if I truly wanted to set myself free from the weight of grief.

I can love you, despite the change in our relationship.

I can love you, despite not being able to openly express that love

the way I used to do.

I can love you, even if you no longer love me back the same.

I can love you, even if I am no longer someone who brings you happiness and peace.

I still miss them dearly,

and some of them remain my favorite people till date.

But what has changed, is the 'need' for things to be back the way they were.

For things to be the way I wanted them to be.

For 'love' to look a certain way and create certain outcomes for me.

When I chose to shed expectations on what my love must look like for them,

loss lost its grip on me and I learnt to live beyond my loss.

__________

I wrote this as I remember four specific losses that mattered very much to me in the years I entered my 20s.

My favorite man in 2018; our relationship became strange

after that one night my parents discovered the truth of what we had.

My favorite man in 2021 and 2022;

everything we had, torn to shreds;

I don't think we were ever ready to be each other's lovers.

A favorite friend in 2021;

a friendship that slipped away silently soon after my breakup.

And another favorite friend towards the end of 2021,

who left without a reason and I never knew what I did wrong.

I fell into waves of grief for each one of these people I seemingly lost within a day, to varying depths. And the one insight that helped me learn to accept these losses was to accept that love can look different from what I'm used to.

I can choose to accept what has happened,

while acknowledging and embracing the love I still hold for them.

Whoever you are grieving for, I believe they were worth loving.

They mattered so, so much to you, and I’m so sorry you are feeling this pain now.

I hope you see, that you can honour your feelings for these people

without the need to restore your relationship to what you once had.

hugs,

val