What to keep … what to purge??
This month took almost everything I had left to brace with. I lost a long-time therapist, my body flared in ways that reminded me how fragile I can be, and mediation closed the door on a marriage that had already been over, but not yet grieved. Some endings don’t arrive loudly. They come quietly, one after another, until you realize the life you were still half-living no longer exists.
As Christmas arrived, the grief sharpened. I can see a future holiday where I may be alone. The men that were bits of my life, and once cared for have drifted into their own lives. The only message I received came from someone who is now engaged, someone I never approached, perhaps because some part of me knew that chapter wasn’t meant to open. It felt like confirmation that the final threads of who I am were being cut.
This is what no one tells you about endings is thay they don’t just take people or roles or routines. They take identity. They take imagined futures. They take the self who once believed there would always be someone on the other side of the table. I’m letting myself feel that loss, not to dramatize it, but to honor it. Because grief is not failure. It is proof that something real was lived, loved, and now must be released.
See the gates, etc. over on Substack
