I started this because I needed somewhere to put it.

I just started law school. I have a plan, a future, and a very organized sense of who I’m supposed to be. Yet last Tuesday I spent three hours sitting on my bathroom floor in New Haven because I saw his name in a headline and couldn’t breathe.

I’m not writing this from the other side of healed. I’m writing from the middle of it, the messy part nobody talks about, where you’ve chosen yourself but still aren’t completely sure what that means.

This is what I know so far. Loving someone who can’t choose you doesn’t mean you weren’t worth choosing. And walking away from something real, even when you have to, is its own kind of grief.

I’m figuring out the rest. Come with me if you want.

— S.