There’s an expectation I didn’t realize I was carrying until it started breaking me.
That after enough time, enough effort, enough work, things should feel more even.
That grief should dull.
That closeness should stabilize.
That my mind should stop spiraling once I “understand” what’s happening.
Lately, none of that has been true.
Not long ago, I lost a companion.
Not just an animal, but a quiet constant — a presence that didn’t ask questions, didn’t need explanations, didn’t require me to be anything other than where I was. Their absence left a strange kind of silence behind. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just… empty.
And grief didn’t arrive all at once.
It came in waves. In pauses. In moments when I wasn’t expecting it.
That surprised me.
Around the same time, there have been moments of closeness in my life.
Small ones. Fleeting ones. The kind that make you feel, briefly, that something is still alive and possible. They’re not promises. They don’t resolve anything. But they touch something.
And what I didn’t expect was how destabilizing those moments could be.
Closeness, it turns out, can stir the nervous system just as much as loss. It wakes parts of us that have been trying to stay quiet. It brings hope — and with it, fear. It reminds us what’s at stake.
Then come the days when my mind spirals.
The thoughts race.
The body tightens.
The sense of ground disappears.
I replay conversations. I imagine outcomes. I try to get ahead of pain that hasn’t even arrived yet. Some days I recognize what’s happening and can meet it with patience. Other days I’m just along for the ride.
It’s a roller coaster — not hour to hour, but day to day.
One day I feel regulated, present, even okay.
The next, I feel untethered, raw, exposed.
And I catch myself asking: Why am I here again? Haven’t I already done this work?
What I’m slowly realizing is that these experiences aren’t separate.
The loss.
The closeness.
The spiraling.
They’re all responses to meaning.
They happen because I’m attached. Because I care. Because something in me is still tuned to connection. The nervous system doesn’t know timelines or logic — it only knows safety, threat, and significance.
Grief isn’t a sign I’m broken.
Spiraling isn’t a failure of insight.
Sensitivity isn’t weakness.
They’re evidence that something still resonates.
A violin doesn’t stop vibrating the moment the bow lifts.
Some notes linger.
Some waver.
Some ache before they resolve.
And some days, the instrument just needs to be held — not played, not tuned, not corrected. Just held.
I don’t have a clean takeaway here. No lesson neatly tied with a ribbon.
Some days I’m okay.
Some days I’m not.
Both are real.
What I’m learning is to stop demanding that the music settle on command. To let the notes move through me without turning every fluctuation into a problem to solve.
This isn’t regression.
It’s resonance.
And for now, that’s enough.