I learnt late in my life that you can also grieve circumstances and not just people. Grief is weird. It’s like you think you won’t pass by the same place but you do and suddenly the clock ticks backward and you see yourself in said place and what could’ve been.
The lump in your throat grows bigger, your eyes sting and your chest starts to feel tighter. & then you realize that some part of you will always wonder & that haunts you more than anything - the feeling of knowing that it still affects you when you thought you had moved on.
Grief is constant I suppose. In the back of your mind, the memories, the attachment are all shoved in a small tiny box. From time to time, it’ll peek through. Voluntarily or involuntarily. It’ll eat at you. It’ll tear and pain you. But it’s also bittersweet ; like staring at a room full of bits and pieces of past you, the days you spent laughing, making the bestest of memories, secrets shared and then your gaze spills to the room next to you and it’s the present you, with new faces, new places and another whole world.
In between, is you. lingering between the pull of the past and the scent of the present. Both feel warm yet suffocating. and then the clock ticks, you put one foot in front of the other, forcing yourself to face forward, to not peek, but one turn of your head and your resolve just crumbles.
One peek you say. One last time you whisper and then you realize as long as you enable yourself to walk back into your footsteps, the door to the past will always open. The band-aids rips open and wound gushes blood, again.
‘Grief is weird’, you ponder. ‘Will the door ever close?’ and the question remains.
