For a long time I thought the grief came from walking away.
I'm not sure that's true anymore.
I think I started grieving her years before I ever said goodbye. I just didn't know I was grieving yet.
We were born ten days apart. We grew up like sisters. She wasn't just family. She was my built-in best friend. The person who could always make me laugh, usually by convincing me to do something just outside my comfort zone. She brought out a side of me that no one else really could. I never questioned whether she'd always be in my life because I couldn't imagine a version of it where she wasn't.
We were going to grow old together.
It's funny how certain we are of those things when we're young. There are people we assume are permanent. Not because we've talked about it or made promises to each other, but because they've simply always been there. You don't imagine a future without them because you've never known a life without them.
Then she got married.
This isn't really a story about her marriage, even though it's impossible to separate what happened from it. It's a story about watching someone you love slowly become harder and harder to reach. There wasn't one conversation where everything changed. There wasn't one fight that ended our relationship. Looking back, it feels more like watching the tide go out. You don't notice it at first. Then one day you look up and realize the shoreline is somewhere you can no longer reach.
At first I thought I could fix it. If I explained myself better. If I showed up more. If I tried harder to understand where she was coming from. But over time our conversations became less about understanding each other and more about all the ways I had let her down.
Around the same time, something else was changing.
I was a few years into my own healing journey. I was learning about boundaries, although I don't think I even called them that yet. I was beginning to understand that conflict didn't automatically mean I had done something wrong. That someone being upset with me didn't automatically make me responsible for fixing it. Those ideas sound so obvious to me now, but they weren't then. They challenged almost everything I believed about love and relationships.
For most of my life, I thought loving someone meant keeping the peace. It meant making yourself smaller when someone else needed more room. It meant apologizing first, even if you weren't sure what you were apologizing for. It meant carrying the discomfort so someone else didn't have to.
Walking away from her was the first clear decision I ever made to choose myself.
I wish I could tell you it felt brave.
I wish I could tell you it felt empowering.
Instead, it felt like I was cutting off a piece of my own life.
I remember thinking, this is never going to stop.
Not this particular disagreement. The pattern. The feeling that no matter what I did, there would always be another misunderstanding, another hurt, another way I had somehow fallen short. I couldn't keep trying to prove that I loved someone who had stopped believing it.
So I told her we couldn't be in each other's lives anymore.
She called a few times after that.
I didn't answer.
For years afterward, I questioned whether I had done the right thing. My people-pleasing tendencies came roaring back, and they had plenty to say. Maybe I was selfish. Maybe I should have just tolerated it. Maybe having me in her life, even in a limited way, was better than not being there at all. Maybe if I had stayed, she would have eventually left him. I know enough now to understand that those questions don't have answers, but that doesn't stop them from visiting me every once in a while.
The strange thing about guilt is that it doesn't really care whether you've made the right decision. It only wants to know whether someone else got hurt because you finally chose yourself. And she did get hurt. That's the part I've had to make peace with. For a long time, I thought those two things couldn't exist together. Either I had done the right thing, or I had hurt someone I loved. It took me years to understand that both could be true at the same time.
When people ask if I miss her, the answer is easy.
Every day.
But the person I miss isn't the woman she is today. I miss the little girl I grew up with. The one who could make me laugh until my stomach hurt. The one who knew every version of me before adulthood complicated everything. The one I assumed would be standing beside me for the rest of my life because that's what we'd always imagined.
As I've been writing this series, I've realized that maybe I wasn't just grieving her. I was grieving the future I thought we were going to have. I was grieving birthdays that never happened, holidays that only exist in my imagination now, and the version of us that would have someday sat together telling the same stories we'd already told a hundred times. Those losses don't have funerals. Nobody brings casseroles when you quietly realize your future has changed. Nobody tells you it's okay to grieve someone who is still alive, so most of us don't. We tell ourselves they'll come back someday. We tell ourselves things will be different next year. That we are better off without them. Or we do what I've done for years and convince ourselves the person we loved isn't really there anymore because somehow that's easier than admitting how much we still miss them.
I don't know if that's true. I don't know who she is today, and she doesn't know who I've become either. Eight years changes people. Maybe if we met today, we'd recognize pieces of each other and be strangers to the rest. Maybe we'd find our way back to something new. Maybe we wouldn't. I've stopped trying to predict a future that belongs to both of us, not just me.
What I do know is this.
Walking away was never the same thing as stopping loving her.
If she ever reads this, I don't need her to agree with my decision or even understand it. I only hope she knows that it was the hardest decision I've ever made. Choosing myself didn't mean I stopped loving her. It didn't erase our years of memories or change what she means to me. It simply meant I could no longer abandon myself to hold onto the relationship we used to have.
I still love her.
I probably always will.
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As I've been sitting with this story, I've started wondering how many versions of this grief exist that we never name.
Maybe you had to walk away from a parent who always chose themselves.
Maybe it was a sibling. A friendship that slowly stopped feeling safe. A marriage. A church. A job that was costing you pieces of yourself. Maybe it was someone you loved deeply but could no longer reach.
Those decisions rarely feel clean. We like to imagine that choosing ourselves comes with certainty, relief, or some kind of triumphant freedom. Sometimes it does. But sometimes it comes with guilt. Sometimes it comes with second-guessing. Sometimes it comes with years of wondering if you could have done one more thing, loved a little harder, stayed a little longer.
And sometimes the healthiest decision you've ever made is also the one that leaves the deepest ache.
I've realized that walking away doesn't always end the relationship. Sometimes it simply changes where it lives. It no longer lives in your daily life, but it still lives in your memories. In the future you imagined. In the person you still hope is okay. In the quiet moments when something reminds you of who they used to be.
Maybe that's why this kind of grief feels so lonely. There isn't a funeral. There aren't sympathy cards. Nobody tells you that it's okay to grieve someone who is still alive or a relationship you chose to leave. We often celebrate boundaries, and we should. But we don't talk very much about what those boundaries can cost.
If you're carrying a grief like this, I hope you know you're not alone.
I hope you know that missing someone doesn't automatically mean you made the wrong decision.
Sometimes it simply means you loved them.
And sometimes love and distance have to exist together.