To be honest, it’s taken a while for me to finish this post. Not just to finish it, but to start it. To meet myself in the middle, where the hurt lies.

Relationships. The people. The bonds that tug at your soul–the ones that make you vulnerable, the ones that store up your laughter and smiles as if they always cared. They are often the very things that break your heart and bury you beneath the weight of grief.

I wonder if they wince as their shovel hits the ground over and over again.

I don’t tell this story from a place of bitterness anymore, but I do think some people learn about grief long before they have the words for it.

I have known this feeling since I was a little girl. I won’t share too many details, out of love and respect for those involved, but I have learned that some relationships die long before the grieving ever ends.

The truth is, heartbreak, betrayal, disappointment, and grief are not things I think we ever fully master as human beings.

I have come to think of life as a table. Some people gather around it when we are young and leave long before we are ready. Others stay.

Some have been there all along. Family. Old friends. People woven into the fabric of your life. Others arrive later and somehow feel familiar before they have any reason to. Maybe it’s shared experiences. Shared heartbreak. Or simply two people finding each other at the right moment.

Over time, they become a part of your table.

You share stories. Laughter. Pieces of yourself. You begin to believe they will always have a seat there.

And then, somehow, you lose them.

Not always with a fight. Not always with a reason.

Sometimes they simply drift away.
You find yourself asking, what happened to all that was growing between us?

There are people who, even though they are sitting with you, are somewhere else entirely. Mentally. Emotionally. Their body remains, but their heart has already wondered.

And you’re left wondering if they are thinking of another table.

I started writing when I was around 13 years old. In a journal, with crinkled pages, made of hemp. It’s leather-bound edging worn from use. I would write and write until my hands cramped. I had so much to say. So much to grieve. So many questions left unanswered.

I remember sitting on my bedroom floor convinced that if I could just find the right words, everything would make sense. As if the pages could bridge the distance between people. As if understanding why they left, why they changed, or why they couldn’t love the way I needed them to could somehow lessen the ache.

It never did.

The pages never brought answers. But they did give my grief somewhere to go.

In my twenties, I started to understand that the answers may never come. They might as well be a thousand miles away.

But still, in my naivety, I waited.

I watched the horizon, convinced that someday the answers would appear there.

Now that I am 42, I realize it isn’t so much about them. It’s about what the waiting taught me. How we are shaped by the things we never fully understand.

There is a beauty in letting it go. In forgiving them.

This doesn’t mean we put ourselves back in the pain. But there is an art to loving people where they are.
As one of my dear friends often says, “Bless them and release them.”

This isn’t just my story. Over the years, I have listened to countless people share their heartache. The grief of losing someone who is still alive. The ache of missing a person who still exists in the world but no longer exists in your life the way they once did.

You are left standing in a gap that feels way too wide. So much to say but no way to say it.

For a long time I thought healing meant getting answers. An apology. A conversation. Some moment where everything came together neatly and the hurt finally made sense.

Now I think healing is quieter than that.

Sometimes healing is accepting that the story may never have the ending you hoped for.

Not every question is answered.

Not every chair is filled again.

And somehow, life keeps asking us to sit down at the table anyway.

With love,
Erica
Salty Blonde Living