Grief.

I once saw a quote by Jamie Anderson that said “Grief, I’ve learned, 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.”

Everyone is quick to say that grief will pass, that it will get easier and that you’ll eventually get over it. This isn’t true. Grief never goes, it comes in waves and it is something that you learn to live with.

No one tells you about the sleepless nights, the days where you drown in so much grief and sorrow that you can’t eat or even leave your bed. The days where all you can think about is what would have been, what could have been and what should have been. All the things you never got to say or do plague your mind endlessly.

Days go by where you feel okay, then suddenly it hits you. That gut-wrenching feeling that you can feel deep inside your chest, all the way up to your throat. The paralysing feeling of knowing that you can’t change what’s happened. That you can’t get that person or something back, no matter how much your heart longs and aches for it.

Grief is heart-breaking, it is soul destroying. When you lose something special, it’s as if you lose part of yourself too. The pain may fade at times, but it never goes away. You carry it day to day as if it’s an anchor holding you down at sea.

My grief will never leave me, it is part of me and despite the harrowing pain, it is a reminder of something special. Something I will always love and something I will always miss..