Some lives don’t have a return path. ▌

There’s a strange kind of grief that doesn’t get talked about much.

Not the grief of losing a person.
Not even the grief of losing a version of yourself.

But the grief of losing a life you can never return to.

People like to talk about “moving on” like it’s a direction.
Like there’s a map.
Like if you just keep walking long enough, you’ll find something that feels like home again.

That’s not how it works.

Some lives don’t have a return path.
No checkpoint. No reload. No save file to fall back on.

Just forward.

And forward doesn’t always feel like progress.
Sometimes it just feels like distance.

Distance from who you were.
Distance from what you had.
Distance from the person who thought they understood how their life was going to go.

There’s a quiet acceptance that comes with that realization.

You stop looking for ways back.
You stop trying to rebuild something that only existed under conditions that no longer exist.

And instead, you start doing something harder.

You start building something new
with whatever is left.

It’s not the same.
It will never be the same.

But it’s real.

And sometimes…
real is the only place left to live. ▌