“Grief is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.” ~ Jamie Anderson

I don’t know what to tell you about grief except that it comes and goes like waves.

One moment everything is stable and quiet and the next minute you’re hit by a tidal wave of flashes, experiences, and memories of all the times you spent together and all the times that could have been but weren’t.

A wave that brings with it all the possibilities that could have been but now will never be because someone who should’ve been a part of your life isn’t there anymore.

The reasons, circumstances, and situations don’t matter. What truly matters is the pain of their absence that hits you like a wrecking ball and breaks you into a thousand pieces and you just lay there watching, waiting, hoping, wishing, and hurting.

Grief is not just sadness. Grief is when your soul is being ripped apart by pain—the pain of all this love that you want and want to give but you can’t. Grief is sadness, anger, helplessness, hurt, anguish, desperation, love, longing, emptiness, memories, and so much more encapsulated into a five-letter word.

Grief is your world falling apart in one moment and flowing out of your body through your tears.

It sucks.

There is nothing good about grief. Or maybe there is—because that’s how you know that you did or could love, that you gave your heart and soul to someone who meant so much to you and your pain is a testament of that. It tells you that you are love.

Even then, it does hurt. A lot. The most pathetic part about grief is that the only thing that can help you to feel good is a hug or some words from the one you’re missing, and that’s something you’ll never get. That’s why grief never ends.

“Some things in life cannot be fixed. They can only be carried.” ~ Megan Devine 

It comes and goes and takes away a part of you with it every time and leaves behind a gigantic void—one that will never be filled. You’ll keep crawling in and out of it in an attempt to fill it, but that will never happen.

Grief is unpredictable. It’ll come unannounced and refuse to leave until you’ve felt every bit of it.

Grief changes you in ways that at times even you don’t understand. It changes the way you look at yourself, life, and relationships. The loss or absence of someone significant in your life impacts you in more ways than you realise.

It has no timeline. Some wounds never heal. Some voids can never be filled. You just learn to live around them.

There’s a weird kind of emptiness that’s always lurking in the background waiting to pounce on you. It just doesn’t make sense. At times, you may also be gripped with intense anger. Sometimes, you will know who you are angry with; at other times, you just don’t know what to do with it. Some days you may find yourself smiling, laughing, and crying while secretly hoping and wishing that the person you’re grieving could walk through the door and be with you. At other times, all you want to do is to be silent.

“There is no grief like the grief that does not speak.” ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

And even though it hurts, the only way to move past grief is to flow with it. Perhaps the only way to heal from grief and loss is to move with the pain. Acknowledge its presence, allow it to consume you, feel the damn pain, and let it flow out.

That pain that you’re feeling is all the love that has nowhere to go.

Let it flow.

“Grief is like the ocean, it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn how to swim.” ~ Vicki Swenson

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