The Grief in Ambiguous Loss.

"Oh, I wish you could know me. And I wish I could know you much more sometimes."

-Noah Kahan

Sometimes I wish that I could tell you how lonely it feels, how lonely it is.

To learn in adulthood the definition of ambiguous loss, finally being able to put words to the things I feel when it comes to you.

The resentment in having to develop the emotional intelligence to be able to process, to cope, and identify the grief that lies in the relationship we never nor would ever have.

Sometimes I wish that I could tell you how confusing, how conflicting it is.

To know the paradox of knowing that you do love me and still know that it has never felt like love to me.

The feeling of unresolved grief of what it feels like to lose a parent who's still alive but is ever absent.

To know that it is the capacity to which you can and maybe to you it is your best. To hold space for that but not invalidating how it feels to me.

To grow up carrying the hopes that maybe they could become more as you have but to learn to accept that not everyone moves with life.

To see you be so unwavering in your loyalty and love to everything except me. To only ever be actually seen when it felt earned, when "it was enough."

To wonder what it would feel like for you to ask “how I am?” and actually mean it, actually want the long version.

I just wish that you would want to truly know me beyond the four walls that you're comfortable in. To maybe just ask "why?". To just say "tell me more. or even how do you feel?"

People can only meet you, as deeply as they’ve met themselves.

To have ever been emotionally available for me, even just for a second.

The unresolved grief in never actually ever be asked the simple words of "how do you feel?" because for some reason avoidance and your fear of vulnerability appeared as “thinking of you or you’re in our thoughts, praying for you” and close ended texts that are meant to show care and concern but never digging past the surface of your comforts, never just asking a question.

The desolation in your feelings always being assumed, because you had to fine.

To covet just want the love that I see other parents give so freely, so easily. The lengths they go.

The mourning in knowing that you're incapable of that. Not because you're a bad person but because you don't have the capacity to, you never have.

The grief that comes in knowing that you will never see me in the way I wish you would, wish you could.

To know you will always be more concerned with being safe than what stunted the connection you tried to build with me that remains stagnant.

To understand that I am not someone that feels like I owe you anything anymore.

The guilt I used to feel in that but have learned was misplaced because how am I to feel any feelings when I was raised not to.

The sad truth I've learned to accept in knowing you will never see the remarkable person I have become because the only way I’ve been able to make peace with that is to knowing that the only approval that matters is my own.

The grief that helped teach me that respect isn't a personal thing, it shouldn't ever be a conditional thing.

To be able to understand that the safety I needed to feel was always more than just physical. That safety should always have been about more than that. That emotional safety mattered just as much if not more.

The nuance in you always making sure I was fed but never fed me emotionally, starved me leaving my stunted stumbling to find my own footing.

The grief in understanding that I had to find my way out of feeling numb and feeling more empty once I actually realized the extent of the lack from you, the complete absence of any emotional safety.

To profound grief in learning to accept that even if your presence is in my life that you’ll never truly be present.

That regardless of being raised where I never felt emotionally safe, I chose to not be that to others, to be far from that.

The person you never taught me to be. The place where others would feel safe, where I would. The person who could create space free from judgements past their masks with the capacity and desire to understand, to care past the surface. Past the “I’m fine. I’m good.” Past the ego of needing to be right.

The grief in knowing that I learned how to make others feel seen just in hopes of maybe one day feeling what I’ve wanted my whole life.

To not only create emotionally space for myself and others. But to be able to also hold it for others without fear of losing myself, without internalizing.

To help allow others to feel felt, like they matter. To help them feel safe, to let their nervous system know it’s okay.

To despite it all, I became the person you never were for me.

To only ever want to able to have conversations without needing to rationalize or justify based on a belief system, to not be incapable of having a conversation without turning it back around to you or invalidating my experience and feelings because it doesn’t feel right for you.

The frozen grief of it all. To feel like you want to get to know me, any version of me.

Maybe that is the most heartbreaking part of it all, in seeing other people's relationships with their families, with their parents that I know it's unfair to put on you, to expect of you.

The grief in not wishing that you were someone else, but wishing that you would want it to be more. That you would try to meet halfway.

Without ever learning how to hold space for grey, how to navigate the nuance, without ever learning how to understand your own emotions let alone be able to try to understand others. Without ever learning how to lean into and not away from the discomfort.

An existence enabling a mindset that allows you to never let anything be "that deep."

An existence that lets you live in the lie of a faux sense of inner peace by leaving everything on the surface, by following the herd. Allowed to avoid the pain of processing by praying it away.

An existence that celebrates performative empathy but in actuality erases it and replaces it with escapism.

The grief in knowing you value keeping your comforts and staying closed off than cracking it to try to connect will never be something I will understand or align with.

The ever present emptiness that lives in so badly just wanting to know the feeling of unconditional love from a conditional person.

The inner conflict of knowing that it isn't all your fault but it was your responsibility and your choice to learn and you have chosen and continue to choose not to evolve, not to grow.

"Our trauma isn't our fault, but our healing is our responsibility."

The grief that lives in the space of wishing and equally knowing the reality that lives in you. Not for lack of hope but for acceptance of truth.

A pain that I hide, that I bury but that cuts deeper than I can usually fathom into words. The grief of emotional abandonment.

The grief that comes with the acceptance of only ever wanting to just be seen, feel seen and knowing that will always be a fantasy. In feeling valued. In feeling like I matter. In feeling genuinely supported and loved.

The grief in learning to cope with the crumbs of what the love you gave looked like.

Holding the space to understand that it’s not about me because the avoidance of feeling was a choice you made a long time ago.

The acceptance of the ever lost answers of a closure never meant to be found. The resolution to be found in the unresolved certainty of the connection.

The grief that is able to coexist in both truths. The grief in having to unpack everything in between. The duality of it all.

To have done my best throughout adulthood to have such bare minimum expectations as the only way to combat feeling disappointed, it doesn’t erase the feelings that still somehow find their way to escape.

The anger that lives in the grief of having to learn to live without the love that you called enough.

The feelings that come to surface in the moments that I watch the efforts and lengths my friend’s parents go to connect with them, support them, include and get to know their significant others, to validate, to respect their feelings and lives.

To ask "why is it so hard?." But to remember in actuality it has nothing to do with me.

The grief in learning to live a life that will feel more full by leaving our glass completely empty.

To actually be able to talk, at length in an open space, in a transparency that I live the rest of my life with.

Without you leaving the room out of discomfort because you don't know how to process anything without Christ's crutch to take the weight of having to feel.

The grief in having to learn to accept that you were the parents that I had instead of the ones that I wanted and that nothing I could ever do would change that.

To know you're alive, but never actually there.

To mourn alone silently that absence that speaks louder than any words you could say, the noise resoundingly present.

Like a constant echo reminding me of what I am missing every time you reach out.

The grief in letting go. To not accept carrying the burden to rewrite someone who is committed to their damage, to their unhealed wounds. To the limits that were projected onto you.

"Never mind, never mind, oh, forget about it. I'll be good, I'll be fine, I can laugh about it."

-Noah Kahan

To come to terms with the acceptance of the feeling of loss in the parent relationship as an adult you once hoped to have but are no longer victim to hoping for. But live with the space and grace in the feelings that linger around it.

The complex grief in never feeling fully chosen knowing by the people who were supposed to.

To let the moments come, to feel them, and to let them not define you. To breathe them in, to embrace them, to hear them, and to release them. To be patient with the process, with your process.

To grieve is to let them go again and again, over and over. To let them come and go, little by little.

To find clarity in the grief that lies in feeling unseen your whole life and the loneliness that lies in emotional absence you've always given and called love.

To learn in adulthood to define what my love could be. What the love I deserved and would value would look like, the love I was capable of giving.

To grieve as time passes the hope I once held for our connection, for our relationship.

To have to learn through adulthood how to give myself the emotional safety that I never was taught but always knew I deserved. That it was never too much to want, to ask for.

Slowly understanding the quiet grief but that lives in the space between the two, the gray in the grief.

The sadness that lives in the nuance. The loneliness of never feeling validated in the life that I've lived and the things that I've become proud of, in the things that I love.

To honor the grief that demands to be felt but to let it transform and not transpire the parts that it touches.

To understanding that grief is a human thing. To validate. To not blame but also not trying to change. To not villainize but not justify either. To accept but not to excuse. To make peace with the reality that is. The pain in finding that piece. The opposing truths that are felt, that are known.

To not ignore the grief just because it's death doesn't look like everyone else's definition. To accept the timeline isn't ours to choose.

The grief in the parts of ourselves it makes us feel, the parts it asks us to heal. The parts it makes us see on the path in finding our truest selves.

The hope in remembering that grieving is growing.

To grow with grief into someone who can carry it without needing to make it feel smaller, to not erase but to transform.

To create space for the complex and confusion that lives in ambiguous grief. That grief doesn't look the same for everyone.

The sadness felt in knowing that you'll always check in, but you'll never really check in.

To remember that being seen is not the same as being known.

To grieve knowing that you'll never be known by the people who claim to know you most.

The acceptance in owning the grief that you've fought to justify for so long.

To recognize grief as grief. To learn to live with a grief that you know no amount of effort could change but only distance can live.

The grief in knowing you’re alive but never really there.

"Leave it all on the table. And I'll say, "I love you," and mean it this time. Say, "I'm sorry,” for everything else. If we found a way to the other side."

-Noah Kahan