You grieve so much more than death when you lose someone.

I wish somebody had sat me down and told me straight.

When your hands clench, trying to grasp for anything to hold onto, you watch a million things you loved slip through like sand.

The phone that doesn’t ring. The friend that says the absolute wrong thing. The ability to walk in a grocery store and not feel like your chest is collapsing in the juice aisle.

You will mourn the person you were. The friends you thought you had. The people you were certain would show up when the sky started falling.

But you will also find comfort in places and people who didn’t know the before version of you. They will accept how you carry loss because it’s the only way they’ve ever known you. No expectations, just acceptance.

You will burrow into the chest of people you haven’t seen or heard from in twenty years. They owe you nothing, but somehow offer the most needed thing.

And you will mourn how you used to be that person, before this, who never really knew how to show up either. Because even in our worst imaginations, we cannot slide into the skin of someone who has to live the rest of their life without a piece of themselves.

They say grief is not linear, but I didn’t know it also isn’t singular. The world tilts on its axis, never quite letting you balance the same way. You think you are just going to mourn that one thing. But you will grieve so many other things; sometimes people who never find a way to lean with you and allow you to live in that permanent state of change.

You will grieve that you cannot repair, restore, renovate relationships the way you would have before. Your shoulders have less space than ever, and you can no longer carry someone who would not also carry you. And you will weep for the strength and stamina you’ve lost to brush it off and say it’s okay. Because you are now swallowed in a version of the world that may never feel the same kind of okay again.

You will want to receive every I’m sorry for your loss with grace. But some part of you will know when it’s just an empty exchange.

But there will also be fumbled sympathy and cringy platitudes that you will grab onto with everything because that person came through. They might have messed up along the way, but grace will cover the parts they don’t get. You won’t expect people to be perfect; you will just expect them to be present.

You will also mourn all the ways before, when you didn’t know how to be present. You will grieve your own reflection sitting amongst all the people who promised they would be there and weren’t.

You will grieve so much more than one thing, than one person, so much more than a singular event that unraveled your life.

You will grieve your own ignorance. Your own failure. The knowledge that you now hold. You will mourn the empty mailbox, your empty arms, the un-rung doorbell, the silence of your phone.