Letting go of What Never Was

A connection that never turned into a friendship.
A crush that never turned into a date.
Love that was never answered.

There is something extra painful about losing something that never was when you did your best to turn it into being. More than grieving a relationship that has ended (any kind of relationship), grieving what never was comes with that eternal itch of possibility.

As long as that person is still out there somewhere, there is that pinch of hope that it might happen, that you might find out what it would have been like.

The friendship. The date. The relationship.
Or maybe even the family bond, the mentorship, the being accepted into a community.

And as with many types of loss is the case, it doesn’t make it easier that losing something that never was, often happens entirely out of our control.

It’s different with the interest you never explored.
The career path you never followed.
The trip you never took.

Those things may feel like that event you maybe want to go to or maybe not and so you keep on hesitating until it really is too late to make it on time and the decision is out of your hands. Only, when it comes to your dreams and interests, you don’t know when your deadline is.

So as hard as it is,
try to be kind to yourself and focus on what you can make happen,
rather than the things that can only come to be if someone else wants them too.

Because those one-sided wishes,
they probably wouldn’t make great realities.