Grief is the tribute we pay for loss. We lose something every day. A part of us dies in every moment. A part of the human population dies every moment. We die. Our loved ones die. Sometimes not even physically. But they wither away before our eyes. And we concede for all the losses without a wince. It is when the bigger part of us die we start to pay our tributes. That’s when we grieve.

I don’t feel the heaviness of sadness for every loss every minute of the day. I don’t fall apart that often. But, deep down I know I’m breaking apart into pieces. The parts of me which were glowing like a full moon are now cut down into pieces. Fragments. Thousands of fragments. I no longer exist as one full person. I exist in pieces hidden away in things. That is when I start to wonder if I’m actually faltering away as a whole or if I have lost the hidden cases for my fragments. 

That’s why I prefer if people asked me which part of me died today rather than how I was doing. I wish I could give recognition for my loss. Yes, you may say I haven’t lost a thing. But to the very least, I have lost a chunk of time. But, that is not all of it. I have lost much more than that. Time is just one of the essences I have lost for the day. And maybe there is a way to remedy that or maybe not. The thing is, when we lose things together, it feels like we haven’t lost them at all. The collective grief we escape makes us believe that we haven’t lost a thing. Or even if we do, we don’t give it enough credit to tear us apart.

But grief is grief. The sooner we let ourselves feel and sit with it, the sooner we can get away from the excruciating ache we feel in and out. The later we embark upon that adventure, the more the pain will devour us as a whole.