lake in black and white

Grief: A love letter

I still love you. And I miss you. I dreamt about you last night, and in the dream we found our way back to each other, even though my awake self know that will never happen. So naturally when I woke up I was incredibly sad about it, and writing this I’m crying about it.

I cherish the time we spent together, the lessons you taught me about people, life, and the treatment I deserved. You taught me that I deserved good people.

We weren’t supposed to love each other, it wasn’t in the agreement. But so quickly we both did.

We comforted each other in our bubble. Albeit temporary, it felt like it would last forever. Why would something so good ever end?

Back then it didn’t really end in a clear way, maybe that’s why you’re still so close to my heart. Why I still miss you when I think about you.

The definite end happened 1.5 years ago, and I don’t think I processed it. My life was so busy, so renewed full of energy, and I was reaching out to a lot of people I’d not been able to talk with in many years. You were one of them.

I could speculate on my own faults, but you asked me not to. I never took the time to grieve losing you, simply because my life was so busy then.

So this dream, this specific one, where we recognized that we’d not been able to reconnect for a while hit me hard. My dreams are often very vivid, and you were with me, we were together again, and when I woke up I lost you all over again.

Would it have been different if I hadn’t moved away 10 years ago? Or would it just have ended earlier in a much more painful way?

On our first and only anniversary, you said something wonderful to me. And that was that you wanted us to be able to keep our anniversary as a celebration of our friendship, years down the line.

Today I don’t even remember what date it was. Was it January? February? March? I know it was early in the year.

I know our relationship developed into more than it was supposed to, and it was hidden from most people. Some people even tried to protect you from me at gatherings, because they didn’t know we were together. They didn’t know how good we were together. Something I can both laugh and cry about today.

I still love you, and I miss you. And today I grieve.

I didn’t understand until a day later, as I’m finishing writing this and as I was online reading other things about grief. Grief is love, and I love you, so I grieve that I’ll probably never see you again.

Yesterday I kept fearing that something happened, this immense overwhelming feeling that you weren’t okay. But knowing that I shouldn’t reach out to you, it just became so intense. I couldn’t stop crying, and I didn’t know why. I didn’t understand yesterday, but today I know.

I’m grieving. Because I loved you, because you’ll always be in my heart. I’m grieving because I know we both think of our time together with love and cherish it. Cherish the lessons we both learnt about ourselves at that time. I grieve because seeing you again, reaching out to you, would risk tarnishing those memories.

I don’t think about you all the time, it’s not that kind of love. But I think about you, and hope you’re well and all the people around you are well too.

Our paths crossed for a few years, and it brought something we both needed to our lives, and I will always remember that.

Thank you. For everything.

Love, Marie.


Header image: “Sjö” by Magnus MWW is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

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