a weight lifted.

a song to set the scene // adieux by m83

It felt like my insides were plummeting to the floor, my stomach ripped from the bottom like a heavy bag of groceries.

I couldn’t believe what I read.

“Are you okay?” those around me asked. Already though, their voices felt distant, like I was falling down a well as they watched in horror from the top.

Panic I hadn’t felt in years flooded to the center of my body.

Feelings, all too reminiscent of trauma choked me as tears made their way out of the corners of my eyes.

I just couldn’t believe it.

I felt sick to my stomach.

Blind-sighted, I felt betrayed, made to feel a fool.

“Damn you! Why do I care so much?” I sobbed onto my gem’s shoulder as he comforted me.

Truly though- why did I care so much?

Lying in bed at 4am, tears streaming down my cheeks as my gem slept soundly beside me, I felt like someone had broken up with me. I felt nauseous with heartache, and foolish for feeling this way.

I thought I was done feeling this way.

I thought those days were behind me, the ones where I questioned, blamed, and doubted myself when others let me down.

In the days that followed though, I started to accept that what I was feeling was completely normal.

It’s normal to have a strong emotional response to someone leaving because for me, that’s a traumatic experience.

It’s normal to question whether I could have done anything differently because that’s how I’ve coped with that kind of loss before.

How I was feeling was normal.

Nothing was wrong with me, nothing was wrong about how I was responding, and once I realized that, I suddenly felt as if a weight had lifted.

If I’ve learned anything from my past, it was that this wasn’t my fault.

This was nothing I did wrong.

I wasn’t a bad person, a bad friend, a bad boss.

At the very core of who I am, I see the best in people. I’m the type of person who goes all in, that’s just who I am.

To live life fully means experiencing all of the good and the bad, the happy and the sad, the life and the loss.

It was, if anything, another chapter in my story.

And when one chapter ends?

Another begins.