🥂 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐅𝐮𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐖𝐞 𝐍𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐆𝐨𝐭

⋆⁺｡˚⋆˙‧₊☽ ◯ ☾₊‧˙⋆˚｡⁺⋆

There are moments when I catch myself reaching for a life that doesn't exist anymore. Not for a person, necessarily, but for the version of myself that believed they would always be there. I miss the certainty more than anything. The quiet confidence that someone knew me, chose me, and was building a future beside me. It's strange how a future can disappear before it ever has the chance to become a memory.

People say time heals everything, but I don't think that's what time does. Time just teaches you how to carry what never really leaves. Some days the weight feels manageable. Other days it feels like I walk into the same invisible wall over and over again, convinced this time it won't hurt. It always does. A song, a familiar street, a joke they'd understand, a random Tuesday afternoon, and suddenly I'm mourning a life I can never go back to.

The hardest part isn't accepting that someone is gone, it's accepting that the ordinary things I imagined so effortlessly will never happen. The conversations I thought we'd have years from now. The traditions we would've created without realising they were becoming traditions. The quiet moments that never make it into photographs but somehow become the foundation of a life together. You don't just lose a person, you lose every version of tomorrow that included them.

I've spent so much time wondering if I should've loved differently. Maybe if I had held back a little. Maybe if I hadn't let them become my safest place. Maybe if I had protected my heart instead of handing it over so willingly, I wouldn't be standing here trying to figure out who I am without them.

But I don't think love was ever meant to be measured by how well we protected ourselves from losing it. Love asks us to be reckless in the most beautiful way. It asks us to trust someone with pieces of ourselves we'll never get back. And sometimes, when it ends, those pieces don't come home the way they left.

I hate that the world keeps moving as if nothing happened. The sun still rises. People still laugh. Life keeps asking things of me while part of me is still standing in the wreckage, trying to understand how something that once felt so permanent could become another story I have to tell in the past tense.

Maybe that's why grief feels so lonely. It's carrying around an entire universe that no one else can see. It's remembering details that don't matter to anyone but you. It's realising that someone who was once woven into every part of your day has become someone you have to pretend not to look for anymore.

I don't regret loving. I regret that love doesn't always get to stay. But if this is what remains after giving someone my whole heart; if this ache, this longing, this quiet devastation is what's left, then maybe it means the love was as real as it felt.

Because if grief is the price we pay for love, then I have loved well.

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