A Real Loss

Most people think they know loss, they think they've felt loss before, but there's a deeper kind of loss some people have felt, I myself can't imagine having to experience it. The truth will surprises you. A real loss runs much deeper than perhaps a missing thing or a failed plan or project you embarked on. Real loss almost always ties to love. It shows up when caring goes so far that a piece of you feels gone after a person or that thing you love leaves you.

When love tips ahead of self, you tend to make room in the heart for that special someone. You put the other person's needs before your own, you dream with them, you grow beside them, you build a life around them, you can't do without them. When life takes that kind of person away from, everything in your life changes. The familiar things that remind you of them makes you sad instead of happy.

This kind of loss goes beyond your own thought, it kind of settles under your ribs, metaphorically speaking. The mornings come with an empty space you notice first, every time. Trying to move is no easy thing. People will tell you to let go or move on, as if pain can be scrubbed away just like that but only you know how hard it is to let go. Loss becomes part of the shape you carry. You carry that weight of sadness and learn how to live with it, the memory just can't be erased.

There is a strange beauty inside the hurt though. To know that this loss means love lived full. Some never get that, because they keep the walls up to protect their fragile self. The walls they keep block both the joy and pain.

Loving more than self requires a level of courage and virtue. Losing what you loved hurts so much. It's part of what makes you human. People reach for one another, share pieces of life and when loss comes, love stays. Love changes how you move and what you hold dear.

I just watched the classic 90s movie Good Will Hunting, and that line touched my heart. Real loss only happens when love outruns self.

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