It Wasn't Just Him
The weight of grieving more than one life at the same time.
This week I had a fever that wouldn’t break and days I couldn’t stop crying. Not the quiet kind. The kind where you’re on the floor and you don’t fully know why, because on paper nothing new happened. I built kits, I posted about my work, some days I felt genuinely proud of what I’m building. And then a few hours later I’d be crying so hard I couldn’t talk.
For months the story I told myself was simple: the relationship ended, and with it went everything I thought I was building. The house I lived in with him, my everyday routine, the dogs, the quiet job I loved, of taking care of someone, cooking for someone, waiting for someone to come home. Of course I’m sad, I told myself. That version made sense. It was tidy. It also wasn’t the whole truth.
I’m someone who likes to grieve things in order, one at a time, the way I try to do everything. So I kept waiting to finish with the relationship before moving on to the next thing. Except there wasn’t just one thing. There was the relationship, the income I used to be able to count on, the career I thought I understood, and underneath both of those, two people I’ve lost that I never actually let myself grieve. I wasn’t carrying one backpack. There were more that I didn’t even know about. No wonder some mornings just standing up felt like the whole day’s work.
My grandfather died of cancer a few years ago. He was the person I loved most in this world. I never had a relationship with my father, and without ever saying it out loud, my grandfather became the reason I believed nothing truly bad could happen to me. The day he died, I felt naked. Not sad first, exposed first, like a wall I didn’t know was holding anything up had quietly been taken out from under the house. Like standing in an empty street where anything could happen to you.
Life didn’t pause to let me catch up. I lost my job not long after. Then I lost a close friend to cancer too, someone I sat with through her last days at the hospital, a loss big enough that it deserves its own post, not a mention inside this one.
And somewhere in the middle of all of it, a relationship arrived.
“If it had been real, it wouldn’t have ended overnight.”
I gave that relationship a role it was never built to hold. I think I needed someone to be the protection I’d lost, so I made him into it, bigger than any one person should have to be. When he left, the hole he left behind was bigger than the one that was already there before he showed up. I don’t actually think I’m grieving him. I think I used him to cover a hole I hadn’t dealt with, convinced myself I was safe again, and built a life that looked exactly like the one I’d always wanted. It just wasn’t real, because a real thing doesn’t end in a single day. Some days I look back and it feels less like my own life and more like I was living someone else’s.
While all of that was happening underneath, on the surface I kept building. I put up a website, I started writing here, not only in my notebook, I took on new clients, I learned tools I didn’t know six months ago. Some weeks it looked like nothing was happening, but that was just how it looked, there was something happening I couldn’t see yet. I was laying foundations underground, in the dark, without being able to see any of it from where I was standing.
Somewhere in the middle of all this I went to Mallorca, to stay with my brother. I smiled again there, the real kind. For a while I let myself believe that meant I was cured. Looking back, I think it was just another way of covering the same hole, a nicer one, but covering it all the same.
What I’m starting to understand now is that the real work isn’t about him, and it isn’t only about my grandfather either. It’s about a belief I built without noticing: that I need someone else standing between me and the world in order to be safe. Nothing bad has actually happened to me since my grandfather died. I’ve handled everything that’s come my way since, on my own. But some part of me hasn’t caught up to that yet, still goes looking for a protector to hand the fear to instead of holding it myself. Maybe it’s the father I didn’t have. Maybe it’s just how I learned to feel loved.
I don’t think that gets solved by finding the right person, I think it gets solved by giving myself everything I keep looking for outside, so that the next time someone stands next to me, it’s because they actually see me, not because I needed somewhere to put my fear.
For now, I’d rather feel the hole than fill it with the wrong thing again. I think if I stay in it long enough, and look straight at it instead of around it, it starts to hurt less. That’s the only way I know to cross this bridge. And I’m sure that on the other side of it, there’s only good things waiting.
What’s something you handed to another person to hold, that was actually always yours to carry?
You don’t become someone new without letting an old version of yourself die first. That’s what this was really about. I write about what’s underneath the surface, because most of what happens here isn’t about what it looks like at first. If you want the real version, subscribe.
Sofi, trying to grieve each loss in order gives this essay its clearest picture of why the weight became so difficult to understand. Your grandfather, your friend, work, the relationship, and the future attached to it had accumulated into several backpacks while daily life still asked you to stand up and continue building. Recognizing how safety became attached to another person creates room to examine what protection and belonging might mean as you build from your own foundation. Grateful for the honesty with which you let several forms of grief remain present in the same story.
As a Gen X woman, I was raised to be useful before I was taught to be myself. I invested in relationships believing that building a future together meant both people were investing equally. Sometimes that is true. Sometimes it isn't.
One lesson I wish I had learned much earlier is this: never build a relationship at the expense of your own identity, financial independence, career, or emotional well-being. A healthy partnership should complement your future, not replace it.
People change. Some grow together; others grow apart. And there are people who, once they feel they no longer need your support, become emotionally distant or disengaged from the future you believed you were building together.
That doesn't mean love is impossible or that every relationship ends this way. It means your future should never rest entirely in someone else's hands, not even the person you love.
Protect your independence. Keep investing in yourself. Your career, your financial security, your interests, and your sense of self are not backup plans. They are part of the foundation of a life that remains yours, whatever the future brings. That is what I learned a little later than I should have. I am glad you did realize that earlier. The road of rebuilding an identity is strenuous and at same time liberating. You are doing a great job....and don't forget healing isn't a linear rode, sometimes you are crying in the floor, sometimes you are dancing in the sky....just like life ups and dows. Keep going wise Sophia.