There is a grief that lives inside of me. Like an eminent gloom waiting to settle in. Like an unraveling or unwinding. It lives like a weight upon my chest, and a strangling of my throat. It lives in the tension of every muscle in my body.

I picture myself clinging to a rope, a tether between what was, and what is to come. I know I must release it. I must let go. There is no use hanging on anymore.

Fear fills my whole body, leaving me only with lonely dread. I want to curl up and be held. I want to feel his skin, once again, pressed against mine. I long for the simple, innocent intimacy that we once shared.

I feel as if I’ve spent my entire life longing, wanting to be seen, known, held, valued, and loved. Loved as deeply as I love. Valued as deeply as I value. Longed for as deeply as I long for.

I want someone to look at me and think “My God, this woman is truly amazing.” I want them to never want to leave my side, not to watch over me and control me. Not to possess me or own me. But out of sheer curiosity, with fascination of what I’ll do, what I’ll create, who I’ll become.

I have a philosophy that kind of fits along with this:

“There’s only 2 places I want to feel content in life.

on my death bed, because I’ve lived a life filled with purpose, meaning, connection, and adventure.
In the arms of the man I love, knowing that I am loved.”
That contentment is what I felt with him.

He was the first to explore my depths. Layer by layer, he peeled away my defenses, until the core of me was revealed. And I saw the core of him. Our demons danced into the night.

Then… The rejection. I spiraled. I lashed out. I behaved like a spiteful child.

Wobbling back and forth, between love and hate, between fierce clinging and shoving him away. Between need and abandonment.

If only I had healed sooner. If only I had understood then, what I understand now, then maybe I wouldn’t have been drawn into the reenactment. Maybe I wouldn’t have hurt him so deeply. Maybe I wouldn’t have been so volatile and reactive…

Maybe our love could have lasted.

I used to think I knew what love was. I once believed that I had loved before. But now, I don’t feel that I had any clue. My love for him was something beyond anything I’ve ever known. It makes every other time I thought I had loved to now seem more like indifference in comparison.

I had him. I feel with all my heart that I had him, even if for a small time.

Then, in my panic induced trauma response spiral, I lost him. And I’ve been devastated ever since.

I know what we had can never be replaced. He is unique, because he stood at the precipice of old and new, between denial and awakening. Once every layer was pealed, it’s impossible for anyone else to peal yet again. There can only be one first. There is a beautiful naive innocence share in that moments with him that can never be relived. Which is why I long for him still.

There can only be one first awakening love. Only one that can stand on the fault line between who I was and who I became. He wasn’t just a man I loved. He was the witness to my emergence, the one who saw me while I stepped out of denial and into consciousness. That makes him irreplaceable. Not because no one else could love me, but because no one else could love that version of me. No one else will ever again see the true birth of the true me. These aren’t things you can repeat.

Once pealed, I became revealed. And revelation is irreversible.

That’s the tragedy. No one else will again witness the innocence that existed before I know the magnitude of pain I had been carrying. No one else will experience the unguarded way that I offered my depths. That tenderness is gone forever.

Now I understand the costs. Naive curiosity has been replaced with fear.

I don’t just grieve him. I grieve a once in a lifetime cosmic moment. I grieve the last time love would feel like discovery without discernment. The last time I open myself without bracing. The last time I love ignorantly, not knowing what’s at stake.

Now, I don’t know if love could ever be as profound again. But I do know it will never be as naive. Any future love will be informed love. Intentional love. Negotiated love. Never again will I love without constraint. Never again will I love without awareness.

For now, I just sit with the grief. Allow it to move through me and try my best to make peace. I let my body catch up with what my mind already understands to be true.

The rites of passage are never repeatable. Only survivable.