It's one of the many life events people struggle with and let's be honest anything to do with change scares us. Factor in the loss of a person, or people in my case, and it feels like a part of you shrinks. That you're not whole anymore and you struggle to rationalise that this isn't permanent. That people will come and then leave behind those intolerable gaps. However, letting someone go doesn't mean a part of you is lost forever. It means that part of you changes. It has to. But the pain remains as a dull ache because that person mattered and they still do. Feelings don't disappear but they do fade or alter over time.
I've lost a lot of people in the last few years and some I've come to realise I may never get back. I always leave the door open for them in the hope that they might call and see me once more. These people mean more to me than living because connections form your life. And it's even harder when you don't completely lose them. You might get to see their faces in photographs which don't include you or you often see them in passing. But due to that decision to leave, you don't get to say anything to them and that increases the ache I spoke about which becomes a sharp throbbing pain.
For me the worst part is seeing them with someone else. That envy of another person standing where I stood. Listening to the same jokes I laughed at months before her. Seeing the way they smile and how much wider their smiles become compared to ours. But then if they are happy then surely they get to stand where I stood. Isn't that how it works? I know if I stood there the conversation would be different now; too much has changed. Smiles would be fake and laughter forced. But I don't know who I am without them; these people I let leave. I mean I did fight for them and it sometimes came across as desperate and needy even when I didn't want it to. But eventually I let them go because I know they wanted to and that they will find people who will lift them rather than almost drown them. You just can't stay once you know. Because knowing they want to leave and sitting across from them, trying to pretend they don't, often hurts more.
Just because it hurts more to stay it doesn't mean it's any less painful to let them go. Not all endings happen with waving hands and the loudest of goodbyes. Sometimes endings are made of teary eyes and the saddest of smiles. The ones that say we tried our best but in the end it didn't work out. Something went wrong and it's a mutual pain so really it's for the best to part our separate ways. I'm frequently reminded of the day I moved to a Women's Refuge with one suitcase when I decided to leave my family. I will never forget that moment when I realised I couldn’t live without them, nor will I forget the very same moment I knew I had to.
I'm still adjusting to it; this being alone feeling which I believed I would always handle. When you say your last goodbye you don't just lose that person, you lose the person you were when you were with them. The inside jokes. The clothes you chose to compliment their's. The way you did your hair. Even the things you wore because they bought them for you. The cinema tickets and the goofy photographs you absolutely hated them for being the one to take them and get the prints. Now they are stored in a box far out of your reach because you can't bare to even touch them yet. Or you worry you'll damaged them or lose them and then that's yet another loss. Some nights I try to remember how it felt to be loved by them. And on other nights I do my best to forget. It's a constant war between needing any reminders of their presence and wanting to forget them completely. It's all about wanting to destroy that pain. But in forgetting you lose be happy memories. Yes, you might lose the painful ones but also the beautiful life-altering ones. The ones that used to make those dark days a little brighter.
The hardest thing I’ve ever done is look at the way they looked at me with so much hate when once they looked at me with so much love. A family which was a unit broke apart and I will always feel responsible. And me leaving wasn't because of hate; it was because of love. I loved them enough to let them go. I said my last goodbye to my mother not so long ago after years of barely any contact. As the words fell from my lips I died a little bit more inside. That night I lay there in tears because I was alone. She wasn't there. And a part of me knew that maybe she never will be again. I can remember nothing but the words that she said to a friend once before, as I left the house in tears. You can have her. They were the most honest things to ever leave her lips. And I wish that she had lied.
Losing someone you love, well, it's something I can't quite put into one sentence. Not one word can single it out. I could try to string the words together with a pretty bow but there's nothing pretty about the silent tears that fall down your cheeks. You can't romanticise the numbness as it seizes your whole body. The gasps sound so very desperate as you try to get up from the floor and you can't seem to find your footing anymore. You may have walked miles and climbed mountains but now moving a millimetre feels too much. So you wrap your arms around yourself as if to pretend you've got someone there. But as you open your eyes you notice there is no one to be found.
I don't think I'll ever get over losing the people I love. But sometimes you realise you can't force someone to love you in the same way or the exact amount that you love them. You might never even hear the word 'love' roll off their tongue even when you say it every day. And somehow you've got to be okay with that eventually.
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