Unfamiliar Terrain

January 14, 2026

I haven’t ever gone through anything like this before.

Not the depth of the connection I felt,

not the abrupt ending,

and not the discovery that so much of what I believed to be true wasn’t.

What’s been surprising is that even now,

things still flare up—

not only the pain, but the good parts.

The tenderness. The shared life. The hope.

Sometimes it’s waking up with a memory of words spoken in quiet moments.

Simple things.

Tender things.

Like him whispering I love loving you into my ear in the dark.

Sometimes it’s something as small and unexpected as eye contact and a hello in a hallway after nearly a year of avoidance—

how that can briefly hit an old attachment and stir strange, fleeting strands of hope that don’t match what I know now, but still arrive anyway.

So I’m letting myself feel it.

I’m remembering that I loved deeply and showed up honestly.

And I’m giving myself grace for having a human nervous system in an unthinkable situation—one I’d never lived through before.