Where Grief Grows Its Children

“Love...I put so much faith in it. Truth...I kept believing it falls always from the top lips of the one you love and trust the most. Faith...it's all bound up to love and trust. Where does one end and the other start, and how do you tell when love is the blindest of all?”

― V.C. Andrews

A confessional eulogy for the living. The one who said, "You come in thorns but I love to bleed." Funny how lovers write eternal songs and swear forever in moments they’ll forget by the next decade. I used to save every plan for you (so I could do them only with you), leave behind the laughter and light, because being happy without you felt like betraying you in some way. It felt wrong to smile in a world where you weren’t beside me. So I waited — foolishly, stubbornly, like someone standing in the rain long after the storm’s passed, hoping you’d show up. But you never came. And I kept waiting anyway. It's so suffocating to live like this but my own self stops me from breaking free for I would love to remain in a cage if you were in it too, or perhaps even if you were out of it and carried me with you. Just not being all alone in a cage.

Perhaps our time together wasn’t much in the grand scheme of years. Not in the way people measure love by anniversaries or seasons, or by the number of birthdays celebrated side by side. In the last fifteen years since we met, and the five that we knew each other — it might not seem like much.

But when I would see you, brow furrowed, eyes dark and sharp, completely engrossed in your work, it felt like I had already spent a lifetime with you. And more.

As though the entire history of the world had turned in those moments — and I had been alive through all of it, just waiting for you to look up.

People say time is a steady thing, but with you it was anything but. A moment could feel like forever, and forever like the smallest ache in my chest.

I remember when I met you — almost thirteen years ago now. We were children, still half-dreaming of what life could be. You smiled at me, and for the first time, I felt something I couldn’t name. Something bright and strange — the first romantic feeling I’d ever known.

When no one was around, you would talk to me. Not in the way boys spoke to girls they wanted something from. It was different, it was quieter, and I didn’t know what we shared, only that it was something. We never told anyone of each other too.

I never said how I felt for you, because you didn’t care for those who fancied you. And yet, you looked at me with a kind of knowing, and an unknowing too — as though you were staring into something you couldn’t quite name in my eyes. A confusion, a flicker.

Then, without reason, you held my hand that day and asked me to dance. You had so many friends. A hundred shining things orbiting around you. And still, you came to me. Perhaps you were just jolly — kind to everyone — that’s what I thought.

But when we met again, all grown, something unspoken passed between us. You told me you had looked at me too, even then. Said you didn’t know me, not really, but you felt something… something that made you wonder what it might be like to marry me.

And you could never imagine it with anyone else. Not ever in your life.

I was the only girl you’d ever truly imagined marrying.

Even though we had nothing — no name, no title for what we were — we kept looking at each other like we’d known each other forever. Like we spoke a language made only for us. The world blurred and faded whenever we spoke, like we were the last two people in it.

You didn’t need to say much. I could feel it.

How we finished each other’s sentences sometimes.

How we dreamed the same dreams, saw the same visions.

It was as though we were made from the same storm, shaped by the same sky.

Maybe it’s easy to forget a fiancé.

Maybe it’s easy to forget a lover.

Even a first love (which we were to each other).

But how do you forget a soul that feels like a twin of your own?

Not even in some grand, romantic way.

But in a furious, aching way — like a flame doused in ice, or a fire drowning in water.

We drove each other mad.

With love.

With hatred.

With need.

With rage.

We loved and hurt each other in perfect, precise ways.

You were nothing like me — and everything like me.

It’s easy to forget a lover.

But not a soul that feels like the other half of yours.

Not a soul so excruciatingly tied to your own you carry each other’s wounds like conjoined twins.

Our pains stitched together, burdens shared.

We expected gods and goddesses from one another, and broke each time we realized we were only human.

We knew exactly where to strike to hurt most.

And we did it.

Not because we wanted to.

But because it was the only way to push the other away when we felt helpless to hold on.

I may never see you again.

But you haunt me.

I see you everywhere.

In faces that almost look like yours.

In the way a certain song makes my chest ache.

In late-night sky.

Perhaps it will be forever.

Perhaps you’ll become my shadow — the ghost I’ll never outrun.

Maybe you’ll be the face the angel of death wears when he comes for me.

And if he does — if he wears your face — I’ll go with him willingly.

The trouble with grief — real grief — was that it never went away, as they liked to say in the five clean-cut stages of loss. No. It grew inside you like a child.

Something you had to carry.

Something you gave birth to.

A thing with a life of its own, that you’d be forced to love for the rest of your life.

And that was what you left me with. A child of yours I didn't want but loved fiercely all the same even if the reminder of its existence only brought me pain.

A grief so intimate it felt like a secret language only you and I could understand. A small, impossible thing I cradle in my hands, in the pit of my stomach, in the hollow behind my ribs where your voice used to echo.

People tell you to let go. They say move on, heal, forget. But how do you let go of a storm that made your blood sing? How do you forget the myth of a person who felt more like a legend than a boy?

Some loves leave.

Some loves fade.

But you — you linger.

A ghost with calloused hands and a crooked grin, and the kind of cruel, careless tenderness that ruins a person’s capacity for anyone else.

And maybe, despite it all, I would choose it again.

I would carry this strange, restless grief-child that almost killed me while carrying it.

I would walk lifetimes with the weight of it growing in me.

Because once, when you were looking at me, it felt like all of existence had been leading up to that moment. For I would spend an eternity with you in a dream than in the arms of another. I would still rest peacefully knowing when I close my eyes you always stand with your arms out, stretched to embrace me.

Do you feel the same as I do? I know you used to, but I don't know the man I love anymore. And if he loves me still. Does he care if I live or die, or is he living his own life? But I will mourn you for the rest of my life, awaiting your return, physically or metaphysically.

Is this how you felt, when you stopped caring about me? Like how I'm losing my faith in you to come and save me and hold me tight? Freeing you even from that last expectation. Because you keep saying you hate my presence in your life? And constantly make me feel like a burden on you? Realizing you only have yourself and no one cares how you feel inside? That promises are just empty words and even love has its limits and conditions?

But once, even if once, we were the perfect halves waiting to be whole again but it seems it shattered and now the broken pieces can't fit. I just know I would love you for eternity wherever you are, beyond worldly paradigms and laws. Even though I have seen you care for me less than an ant at your feet.

And that was enough to ruin me.

Forever.

I'll meet you someday in the stars.

© 2025 Inaba Tarek