Broken Open

I’m realizing something new about loss.

Or maybe not new.

Maybe I’m finally finding words for something I’ve been living for months.

Losing someone you are still deeply in love with, someone you had a beautiful life with, someone who loved you just as deeply in return, is a very different kind of heartbreak.

There is no anger to channel.

No betrayal to hold onto.

No story to rewrite.

No villain.

That kind of hurt doesn’t live here.

It’s not that kind of sadness.

The sadness I know now is rooted entirely in love.

Every facet of it.

Every memory.

Every longing.

Every tear.

Love on all sides.

And somehow, that makes it both gentler and infinitely more painful.

Because there is no part of me trying to protect myself from him.

There is no part of me trying to move on from someone who stopped loving me.

I don’t have to convince myself that he wasn’t who I thought he was.

I don’t have to make him smaller in order to survive his absence.

The love remains.

And perhaps that’s why the absence does too.

It is a strange sadness.

One that is empty and full all at the same time.

Broken and whole in and of itself.

Whole with a giant piece missing.

And yet somehow, the missing piece still feels entirely present.

Still part of me.

Still woven into every fiber of who I am.

It’s comforting and devastating all at the same time.

There is no escape from it.

And strangely, I don’t really want there to be.

Because escaping the pain would mean escaping the love.

And I don’t want to lose that too.

People often say grief breaks you.

But I don’t think that’s entirely true, at least not for me.

Not this kind.

This kind of grief doesn’t just break you.

It breaks you open.

Open in ways I didn’t know existed.

Open to depths of sorrow I didn’t know were possible.

But also open to gratitude.

Open to empathy.

Open to beauty.

Open to wonder.

Open to the profound understanding that loving and losing are forever intertwined.

Because perhaps that’s the price of being loved deeply.

Not bitterness.

Not resentment.

Not regret.

But the strange and sacred burden of carrying love after the person who gave it to you is gone.

And maybe that’s why grief feels so strange.

Because I’m not trying to stop loving him.

I’m not trying to get over him.

I’m learning how to carry a love that no longer has a physical place to land.

And that is sacred work.

Hard work.

But sacred work.

Because the relationship didn’t end.

Life ended.

But love didn’t.

Love remains.

Not memory.

Not nostalgia.

Not wishing.

Love.

Present tense.

Still part of me.

Still shaping me.

Still breaking me open to make room for gratitude, wonder, and tears.

And maybe that’s why, despite all the heartbreak, I’m becoming so full of wonder.

Because somewhere deep inside, I’m discovering that death interrupted life.

But it didn’t interrupt love.

Maybe it broke me open.

And perhaps that is what makes this journey through grief so profound.

Not because it is sad.

Of course it is.

But because it arrives somewhere unexpected.

In the realization that gratitude and wonder and beauty can exist even in our darkest hours.

That joy and sorrow are not enemies.

That broken and whole can somehow exist at the same time.

That love endures.

This journey began with grief.

But it continues with love.

Present tense.

Still part of me.

Still shaping me.

And maybe that is the greatest gift love leaves behind.