Grief

There is a kind of grief
that does not arrive all at once.

It leaks.

Through cardboard boxes.
Through sleeplessness.
Through photographs you forgot you packed.
Through a random Tuesday at 2:17 a.m.
when your body wakes up like it has remembered
something your mind was trying not to know.

And suddenly
there you are again,
staring at the ceiling in the dark,
heart racing for no visible reason,
grieving things that are still technically alive
but already disappearing.

I am grieving a career
while I am still standing inside its hallways.

Grieving classrooms
that still smell like dry erase marker and paper and stinky kids,
kids who will keep growing without me,
versions of myself
that only existed inside those walls.

I am grieving the woman
who survived by becoming useful to everyone.

The woman who kept running.
Who kept teaching.
Who kept creating beauty out of exhaustion
and calling it purpose.

I am grieving friendships
I thought would age beside me.

People I thought would stay
because I stayed.

I am grieving relationships
that became ghosts before they became endings.

The strange pain
of watching someone slowly loosen their grip on you
while still saying your name softly.

The grief of feeling the future crack
before it actually breaks.

That may be the cruelest kind.

Future grief.

The grief of already knowing.

Knowing some things are ending
while you are still being asked to live inside them normally.

Knowing certain conversations are coming.
Certain distances are growing.
Certain doors are quietly closing
even while everyone keeps pretending
the house is still whole.

And underneath all of it
is this deep sadness and exhaustion.

This nervous system
that has forgotten how to rest.

This body that keeps sounding alarms at midnight
because somewhere along the way
it learned that love leaves,
jobs end,
people change,
homes disappear,
and even beautiful things
do not always stay.

I keep packing boxes
like I am packing pieces of my own life into storage.

Old photos.
Old letters.
Versions of myself
I cannot carry forward intact.

And maybe that is what grief actually is.

Not just losing people.

But losing entire futures
you once lived inside of emotionally.

Losing.
Losing certainty.
Losing the assumption
that something would last forever
simply because it mattered so much to you.

I think people imagine grief
as crying on bathroom floors
or funerals
or dramatic endings.

But sometimes grief is quieter than that.

Sometimes grief
is standing in your kitchen or lying in bed unable to move.

It is staring at a wall.

It is driving home in silence.

It is waking up already tired.

It is carrying memories
that no longer have a place to go.

And still, somehow

I keep waking up.

Keep running.
Keep teaching.
Keep loving people
with a heart that should probably be more guarded by now.

Because beneath all this grief
there is still something alive in me
that believes life can become beautiful again and has always been that way if only we have eyes to see that.