"Sometimes the hardest part of love isn't losing someone—it's learning how to live after you do.
The first morning without her felt wrong in ways I couldn't name.It wasn't dramatic. The sky didn't fall. The wind didn't stop.
The birds still sang.
The city still breathed.
The coffee still brewed.
And that was the strangest part.
That the world continued.
Without pause. Without hesitation.
Like it hadn't noticed.
Like it hadn't lost her too.
I sat at my kitchen table, staring at the mug in my hands.
Steam rising.
Familiar, ordinary.
I took a sip.
It was bitter.
Not like nostalgia.
Just… bitter.
I didn't cry that morning.
Not because I didn't want to.
But because I didn't know how anymore.
I had used up every shape of grief in me.
There was nothing left to spill.
Only space.
Days passed.
Then weeks.
And I tried.
God, I tried.
I filled my time with anything that felt like motion.
I ran miles until my knees gave out.
I drowned myself in spreadsheets and emails and calendars full of meaningless tasks.
I wrote dozens of false beginnings, half-buried poems, sentences that ended too soon.
But nothing softened the ache.
The world felt hollow.
And I was a man made of echoes.
Carrying a ghost no one else could see.
I stopped expecting miracles.
Stopped watching the mailbox like it might cough up another letter.
Stopped pressing rewind on the cassette tape hoping she'd say something new.
Stopped looking at the mirror, waiting for some younger version of me to appear with answers.
I stopped waiting.
And that's when something changed.
⸻
In the quiet, she became something else.
Not a voice in the hallway.
Not a face behind the glass.
But a rhythm.
A warmth that arrived unannounced when the wind shifted or a song played in a café I'd never been to before.
She wasn't haunting me anymore.
She was guiding me.
In stillness.
In memory.
In the space where sorrow becomes understanding.
I began to live again.
Not for her.
Not in spite of losing her.
But because she had once taught me how.
I did the things I used to say "someday" about.
Traveled to cities she circled in magazines.
Ate dishes she once described with childlike wonder.
Stood in front of oceans with my shoes off, letting saltwater baptize what was left of my past.
I let rain hit my face without running for cover.
I let silence sit in the room beside me without trying to fill it.
I stopped rushing through my days like they were something to survive.
And I noticed—
Sunsets looked different now.
Not brighter.
Not softer.
Just realer.
Like I was finally looking.
Like she was behind my eyes, teaching me how.
⸻
And little by little, I forgave.
The boy who ran.
The man who forgot.
The world that kept spinning.
Even her.
Not because she left.
But because, in some strange way, she stayed.
Now, when I think of her, it doesn't unravel me.
It holds me.
Like a thread.
Not a chain.
Like something that doesn't trap you in the past…
…but keeps you stitched to it, gently.
⸻
One year without her.
That's what the calendar says.
But time doesn't move in straight lines anymore.
Some days still hurt like the first goodbye.
Others feel light, almost weightless.
I still miss her.
I always will.
But I am still here.
Still breathing.
Still capable of wonder.
Still learning how to love—
again.
Because some loves don't die.
They transform.
They soften into the shape of who you become.
They leave echoes, not for haunting—
but for becoming whole.
And I think… I'm becoming.