How Do You Grieve What Never Came to Be?

Maybe this isn’t a letter.

I remember imagining what it would be like seeing you again. Shy, hot, drawn, hesitant, a lot. I’d imagined a lot, but my favorite was hugging you. So when I saw you standing at the entrance of the office we would go to share for the next twelve months, the very blood in my veins surged.

You know we never really talked about it. We experienced what we experienced and moved on. And that was my punishment. 

I had built a wall around myself long before I met you. I had always been in control, deciding what was what and who was what, deciding who came and who left. I was in control, and I liked that power. 

The year was 2020. January. The night before, you said you were coming to see me. To tell me goodbye. You didn’t make it. I didn’t think too much of it. I could not think too much of it. We were just there.

The year was 2020. February. You said you would be sending me flowers for Valentine’s day. An answer to an Instagram poll I made about what my followers were doing on the day that celebrates love and sin.

The year was 2020. March. We stayed up until midnight that night. We spoke on the phone for the first time. I said something poetic while looking at the walls of my living room. You said I should write that down. I said that I would but I never did. You also asked if I could hold it down for a year. I said ‘yeah, I think so.’

The year was 2020. April. Lockdown gave us more time than we needed, and we loved it. The bonding month.

The year was 2020. May. We celebrated Eid-ul Fitr. You craved larh and mentioned so in a post you made on your Instagram story.; to which I offered to DHL you some. It was also the month you turned twenty-three. I think I remember praying for you. I knew then, I was slowly beginning to lose touch with my power. I thought so little of it.

The year was 2020. June. I don’t know how to describe it. Words fail to capture the essence of that month. Perhaps you understand; perhaps you don't. We both existed within its confines, unaware that it marked the inception of the end. I wish I was there to hold you. You have no idea how badly I wanted to be there to hold you. I put my own need to be held on hold for you. I ached just thinking about how I put my own grief on hold for you. The injustice of it all pierced my heart. Why didn’t you let me be there for you?

July and August unfolded before us with a harshness that seemed to mirror our inner troubles. I spent them looking for you, looking for the fragments of what once defined us. I battled between the rationality of my mind and the yearning of my heart. Every time I wanted to let go there was that song you sent me that I’d go back to and my heart would suddenly overpower my mind. But they fought, they fought hard and they fought long.

When September came, my mind gave my heart its full might and pushed it to the ground. I was left to lift my knees and learn the hard way, sometimes, one must put one’s pride to the side for the things that matter most. But did I internalize this lesson? Weak, am I not? All this power I seemed to have possessed, all this strength, and I couldn’t even fight for what I truly wanted.

But I knew I had transgressed against myself by falling for you. A thing I kept unuttered lest it lands in your ear. Was I shy? Maybe. Drowned in shame, feeling too little because what super power I had, you took away without even knowing what you were doing? Yes, perhaps. I transgressed against myself when you started drawing away and I let you. I let you because it was easier. That way I could blame you, say it was you who caused us to drift apart, that it was you who didn’t have what it took. I absolved myself of the responsibility to fight for us. Yet, in my cowardice, I failed to grasp the gravity of my own complicity. And that was my punishment. 

I did not tell you, but my journal held pages inscribed with your name. My body wrote poems inspired by the desire for your touch. Your name weighed heavy on my tongue each time I prayed. I did not tell you, but did I have to?

I like to believe that I still hold parts of you. I think I always will. I think, in every bond forged - whether by friendship, love, kinship, or progeny – there lies a sacred exchange. There will always be parts of us that belong only to the other. I don't know; these are simply thoughts. And this isn’t a sad letter, I promise. I only want to say, I have learnt. 

I was gonna wait, you know. It was all I could do at the time. And in that waiting, there was a strange comfort, a fragile hope that one day, I believed one day, soon, you could come back and tell me you missed me. Tell me you wanted to hold me. Anything really, I was just expecting anything from you. But time marched on and silence prevailed.

The months that followed, I avoided songs I knew — and liked — because of you. Sometimes I ignored the playlists I created because some of those songs were on it. Sometimes I fought it and just listened to them because I wanted to remember you, remember there was a time where there was a possibility of you and me, remember that that possibility hung in the air like a fragile thread.

This is not a sad letter. It is a reflection of a truth I did not face when it stood in front of me. And today, I can confess that you were, to me, all the goodness one could ever ask for. You were on the cusp of my love, teetering on the edge of my heart. There was a time when I could have fallen for you - or at least, I believed I nearly did. 

The other night, you showed up in my dreams and followed me to the night after. I found myself in a life where your head rested on my stomach, tracing the rhythm of my breath. It felt light. On both nights I woke up with a soft opening of my eyelids, my body still and my heart calm. Despite the fact that we had once parted ways, our scars remained. I never fully loved you, but I think I came achingly close. Some days, the vastness of uncertainty weighed heavily on my heart. ‘What ifs’ lingered in my mind. Something close to wishing I had allowed myself to love you. 

It’s hard, you know. Grieving the loss of something that could have been. It is a struggle that defies comprehension — for how does one mourn the absence of what never truly came to be? The words falter on the tongue, the emotions tangled in a web of confusion. There's a profound sense of isolation that comes such a loss, a feeling of being adrift in a sea of unspoken longing. 

Here however, forgiveness flows gracefully; and always, first to myself. And if ever you wish to understand beyond these words, listen to Lewis Capaldi’s Lost on You. 

I wish you all the goodness life has to offer. I hope wherever you are, whatever you do, whomever you are with, you are happy.

With all the love that could have been…