You’re still alive, and somehow that’s what makes this harder to explain.

Because there isn’t a clean ending to point to. No moment I can name where everything stopped. Just distance that kept growing until it became something I didn’t know how to cross anymore.

We were both breaking at the same time.

I think that’s where it started.

I was so deep in my own life, trying to survive something that was already slipping through my hands, that I didn’t see how much you were slipping too. Or maybe I did, and I just didn’t have anything left to give.

That’s the part I go back to.

Not what happened after. Not the choices you made or the people involved. Just that moment where we both needed each other and neither of us showed up in the way we should have.

And then everything else built on top of that.

You moved forward in ways I didn’t understand. I stayed stuck in ways you probably couldn’t stand. And somewhere in between, we stopped being safe for each other.

I wish I could say it was just one thing.

But it wasn’t.

It was timing.
It was pain.
It was silence that lasted too long.

And then he died.

And something in me hardened in a way I didn’t expect.

I don’t even know if it was fair, the way I felt. I just know I couldn’t separate any of it anymore. The history, the hurt, the distance, him. It all blurred together until I didn’t know what I was grieving.

You, him, or the version of us that existed before everything fell apart.

I think that’s what this really is.

Grief without a place to put it.

Because you’re still here. Living your life. Breathing in the same world as me. And yet, I don’t know you anymore.

And I don’t know how to mourn someone I could technically still reach.

But I do.

In quiet ways.
In moments that remind me of who we used to be.
In the space where you still exist in my memory, but not in my life.

And I don’t know if the hardest part is losing you,

or knowing we both had our hands full of breaking things
and still managed to let go of each other too.

(I’m still learning how to grieve someone who still exists, but no longer exists in my life.)