Grief doesn’t ask for your permission. It doesn’t wait for the right time. It doesn’t give you a chance to breathe. It shows up when you least expect it, hitting you hard, over and over.
There are moments when you think you’ve come to terms with it. You convince yourself, for just a second, that they’re in a better place—that they’re not suffering anymore. And for a brief moment, you find comfort in that. But then it hits, like a sucker punch to the gut. The reality of it. That they're gone. And it’s not some abstract thought anymore. It’s real. And it's suffocating.
You think you’re moving through it. You’re coping. You tell yourself you’re okay. But then, out of nowhere, it hits you like a ton of bricks. You’re driving, and the thought just slams into you: they’re never coming back. It’s like a wave of heat and cold all at once—your chest tightens, your heart races, and the tears flood in like they have no control. It feels impossible. You don’t know how you’re still breathing. But you are.
You try to pull yourself together. Maybe you blast music, something you used to listen to with them, something that brings you some kind of fleeting peace. Or you pray, talk to God, hoping for some kind of answer, some kind of relief. And sometimes, it feels like the world is supposed to keep turning, but it’s as if you’re stuck, frozen in that moment of loss.
Grief doesn’t leave when you want it to. It doesn’t come neatly packaged with a timeline or a set of instructions on how to handle it. You just have to try to survive it, to get by, minute by minute, hour by hour. And some days, it feels like too much. You feel broken, like you’re walking through life with a huge hole in your chest that no one can see. You smile, you function, but inside, there’s a part of you that will always ache, always remember, always feel their absence.
And that’s the thing. People want you to move on. They want you to heal. But nobody talks about the fact that you’re never really going to move on from it. The person you loved is gone, and that’s not something you can just shake off. So you live with it. You carry it with you, every single day. The weight, the silence, the absence. It doesn’t get easier. You don’t just “get over it.” You learn how to live with it.
If you’re reading this and you’re feeling like you’re drowning in it, like you’ll never catch your breath again, I want you to know you’re not alone. There’s no magic fix, no instant cure for this. You’ll still have days where it hits you hard, when you wonder how you’re supposed to keep going. But just surviving, just getting through the next moment, is enough. You’re doing it. Even if it doesn’t feel like it, you’re still going, still breathing, still finding a way to keep living.
And that, in itself, is enough.
Keep going. Keep breathing. You will make it through this. The pain might never fully go away, but you will find moments of peace again. You will find joy again, even if it seems impossible right now. You are not broken, you’re just healing in a way that’s all your own. And that’s okay. You are enough, just as you are.
Katy Nichole “When I fall” https://youtu.be/EH87xXauLoI?si=0isJhdzqxVXJuAtC
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