I am grateful for this grief, because it is a beautiful thing to have experienced something worth grieving. via /r/gratitude

Today I had to say goodbye to someone I will no longer have in my life. Am I devastated to let them go, and afraid for the future without them? Yes. But I’m also so thankful I even got to experience knowing them, being with them, in the first place.

It is okay to be sad: I am allowed to be sad; sadness is a normal reaction. It’s wonderful that I got to experience a relationship like this—one that hurts so badly to leave, because it was so meaningful to experience.

Who was it who said “grief is love with nowhere to go”? My love-river just got dammed up and I’m freaking out a bit about the resulting flood. But I’m also a bit in awe of the magnitude of emotion I’m feeling.

I’m crying because I’m alive. I’m active on this planet, meeting and loving people. They don’t all stay around forever. “Some people come into your life for a reason, or a season, but not a lifetime.” Another quote I don’t know the origins of.

It’s scary to feel this deeply. One of the things I love(d) about this person was that they always made space for me to feel what I needed to feel. I’m gonna try to do that for myself, now.

Thank you so much. I direct this to the person I must leave, for having such an impact on me; to myself, for being willing to bare myself to another person, and for letting myself feel so genuinely and deeply; to the universe at large, for giving space for the two of us to have met and spent time together. To you, for reading.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.