Living Grief

Lately, my grief has felt alive again — not distant or faded, but pulsing quietly in my chest. It doesn’t just miss the past; it longs to say hello. It wants to ask, “How has your life been since we last saw each other?”

It’s strange how love doesn’t always know where to go when absence takes its place. The part of me that understands boundaries knows we can’t have the same kind of connection anymore, but another part still aches for the version of life where friendship might have been possible — maybe not in this one, but in the kind of universe Anson Seabra sings about in Loving Means Leaving, where it could’ve worked.

For me, connection doesn’t come easily. When it does, it feels rare — like being seen in a way that doesn’t happen often, and being able to see someone else deeply too. I didn’t see everything that lived beneath the surface, but I saw what was allowed to show, and that was enough to change something in me.

Logically, I know the difference between care within a role and mutual friendship outside of it. But knowing that doesn’t stop my chest from tightening when I think about it. My mind tries to make peace while my body still reaches.

The reminders find me in quiet, ordinary ways.

A flower that smells faintly like chocolate.

A line from an old song.

A laugh that sounds just close enough to how it used to.

A movie that was once recommended suddenly appearing on my screen.

Or a post about a social-justice movement crossing my feed — and I think of her heart, how it seemed to widen to make room for showing up and speaking up.

Each one is like a small tap on the shoulder from the past — not cruel, just present. They remind me that connection leaves traces, and that some people stay stitched into the fabric of your days long after they’re gone.

Sometimes I wonder if part of my subconscious enjoys keeping me stuck in this loop — revisiting what I can’t change, turning it over and over until it feels like self-torture. But I think what it’s really doing is searching for resolution in a story that doesn’t have one. My brain wants to solve what my heart just needs to hold.

The longing isn’t about wanting to undo anything. It’s about wanting to feel worthy of the kind of connection that once felt possible. Because even though I’m still growing and healing, some part of me still whispers that maybe I wasn’t enough to make staying easy, or friendship imaginable.

I try to remind myself that her care was real — and that its reality doesn’t depend on what form it can take now. I remind myself that being seen once doesn’t expire just because life moved forward. And I remind myself that grief doesn’t mean I’ve gone backward; it just means something inside me still remembers how deeply I cared.

Maybe this is what it means to carry living grief — the kind that doesn’t fade, but softens around the edges. The kind that no longer begs for return, but still sometimes turns its face toward the past and says, quietly, “I miss you. I hope you’re well.”

And maybe that’s okay. Maybe that’s how love learns to live in absence — not by letting go completely, but by learning how to keep breathing when the hello has nowhere to go.

-Lives are always shifting, always changing. And if someday it ever feels safe to say hello again, just know — there’s a doorstop to my life that’s there just for you.-

Author’s Note

Writing about grief as often as I feel it makes me feel exposed, almost like I’m walking around with the inside of my chest turned outward. But putting it into words gives the ache somewhere to go. It’s not about holding on; it’s about letting the feeling have a place that isn’t just inside of me. Every time I write, it feels a little less heavy — not gone, just shared with the page for a while.