- The loss of seeing your parents lose their will to live, a little each day.
- The loss of never being able to dance with your siblings again.
- The loss of your friends while still being friends.
- Deleting an old friend’s birthday reminder from your calendar.
- Work friendships disappearing into nothingness
- A friend becoming perpetually angry, without ever informing why.
- Deleting a message you typed for a friend, because you are tired of being silently rejected.
- The loss of your friends who are no more friends. I was on Instagram yesterday after a while and in that spree, I stalked several creators whose content I enjoy. Then I was reminded of an old friend from 2 years back, but we have lost touch over the last year. And even though I moved to the search bar to type that friend’s name, I stopped. No one talks about that loss.
I have found that most losses that happen as adults are losses in relationships, in some way or the other. Mostly because you cannot (and must not) force others to change.
Nonetheless, it is still a loss.
Most of us do not acknowledge it because we think we are the ones who are suffering, while everyone is still sorted. But the fact is that everyone deals with these losses, does not acknowledge them, and moves on in life. Yet, they don’t ever fully move on. Pain has a way of acknowledging itself if we don’t acknowledge it. It shows up in less joy, a slower pace of walking, less than usual smiles, slowly losing hope from life, and hurts in other relationships that don’t deserve those hurts.
May we have the courage to write out what gave us pain, so that it does not become a perpetual existence of our life, the dragon that always stays, often sways but never wanes.