SMILE! :D

Today I found myself thinking about a comparison that is probably imperfect but one that led me to reflect on something that feels unfair. Society seems to understand certain struggles and forms of suffering with relative ease.

When someone has smoked for years and tries to quit, most people recognize that there are habits, patterns, physical and psychological dependence, memories attached to it and an ongoing battle behind every relapse. No one expects a person to stop craving cigarettes overnight. It is understood to be a complex process.

Yet when it comes to love, or feelings that remain long after a relationship has ended, that understanding seems to disappear much more quickly. The response is often simple: “move on,” “get over it,” “there are other people.” As if emotions operated according to the same rules as conscious decisions.

The comparison between smoking and loving is not really the heart of the matter because smoking is a behavior, an action a person chooses to repeat. Loving is not a behavior. Loving is an emotional state.

Perhaps a fairer comparison would be between smoking and actively pursuing an impossible relationship. Even if the analogy is imperfect, it still points to something that stands out to me, the difference between how society understands some struggles while minimizing others.

There are people who fully understand that overcoming an addiction is difficult because it means letting go of something that has been part of your life for a long time. Yet those same people often seem less willing to understand that letting go of someone can also mean letting go of a part of yourself.

You do not lose only a person, you also lose plans, imagined conversations, shared dreams and a version of the future that existed in your mind.

Perhaps that is why I struggle with the idea that continuing to love someone automatically means wasting your life. There is an important difference between living while waiting for someone and living while still loving someone.

I do not believe a person is a failure because they cannot simply switch off a feeling whenever they want, nor do I believe that the only valid way to move forward is to forget completely. Sometimes feelings simply remain and not because we deliberately hold onto them but because they become part of the mark another person has left on us.

Maybe the real problem is not feeling, maybe it is becoming unable to move and those are not the same thing.

A person can accept reality, understand that they will probably never be with someone again and still carry love for that person. They can continue working, building a future, meeting new people and living a full life. The love remains but it is no longer at the center of everything.

If one day it fades away, that is okay but if it never disappears completely, perhaps that is okay too. Perhaps some people become a permanent part of who we are. Not as an open wound, nor as an endless hope but as a quiet presence that stays with us. Something that no longer defines our life, yet does not need to be torn from it either.

girlhood, or birding before work; poking through owl pellets for tiny bones. I love my friends.

Dreaming of you is a strange kind of pain.

It breaks me apart,

yet somehow it comforts me too.

Because in those quiet hours,

when my eyes finally close,

you still exist in my world.

Not beside me,

not in the way I once wished,

but in the place where you never truly left

my dreams.

There, we are still us.

Our story never ended.

The chapters keep turning,

the conversations continue,

and for a little while

love is allowed to live again.

I don’t know if that’s healing me

or hurting me even more.

Maybe it’s both.

Maybe that’s what grief becomes

finding comfort

in the very thing that wounds you.

Either way,

this is the life I have now.

Learning how to keep moving forward

while carrying memories of your existence,

of your laughter,

of your love,

of everything we once were.

And though this endless loop

often leaves me aching,

it has taught me things too.

It forced me to look at myself,

to see what I couldn’t see before.

It opened my eyes

where they were once closed.

It showed me truths

I spent too long avoiding.

I don’t know if I’ll ever love again.

Maybe I will.

Maybe I won’t.

The future remains unwritten.

But what I know for certain

is that I loved you

with everything I had.

With every piece of my heart,

every hope,

every dream.

And whether that’s a blessing

or a burden now,

I cannot say.

But one thing remains true:

I may love again someday,

yet I will never love

the way I loved you.

Because some loves arrive only once,

leave their mark forever,

and change the shape of a heart

long after they’re gone.

-having a job

-not having a job

-applying for jobs

-the job market