Love is a privilege. We feel love in our families, friends, partners, and in our communities.

When we love, souls become intertwined, bonded in a special connection that feels too euphoric to let go of. Butterflies fill our chests as the warmth of their presence fills us with comfort, making the gloomy nights of our lives feel as though they’ve suddenly vanished.

Yet, at its core, loving someone means caring for them even when they become unreasonable or unstable. Through thick and thin, we care not because it is our “job,” but because we choose to love them despite it all.

But sometimes, loving someone means letting them go. It means realizing that, to truly honor that love, you must finally choose yourself.

A stake to the heart

(Photo from Chappell Roan/YouTube)

To trust is to hold your heart out on an open palm and hope the other person doesn’t decide to squeeze. It’s a gamble of the highest stake—an invitation for someone to either become your sanctuary or your peril. We speak of it as a simple choice, but it feels like standing at the edge of a cliff. Statistically, they say it’s a coin flip, a 50/50 chance at happiness.

But my history has rewritten those odds. In my world, the chance of my trust remaining unbroken is closer to 10-percent. I’ve learned through many quiet tears that most people eventually choose a path that leaves me bruised. Sometimes I have the strength to walk away; other times, I love them enough to stay and sift through the wreckage, hoping to find a reason to try again.

The first time I experienced heartbreak was from my dad, when he broke his promise to spend the day with me at a school for family day. On the day of the event, he was missing. As it turned out, he was with some people somewhere else. I no longer hold grudges, but I was hurt enough that I'm never as excited again.

The most recent one came from a friend who chose silence over reconciliation. I don’t blame them for keeping their peace, but it’s a quiet, heavy heartbreak to realize I wasn’t worth the discomfort of a difficult conversation. It hurts to know that I was willing to sit on the fire to save what we had, while they were content to let it burn out. I find myself mourning not just the friendship but also the realization that, if the roles were reversed, I would have fought to keep them.

The deepest pain doesn’t always come from screaming matches. Sometimes, it’s in subtle moments when you realize the care was never a two-way street. I call this “The Care Gap,” where people in a relationship experience an imbalance between the effort invested and the reciprocity received.

There is a cold clarity in watching distance erode a bond—further solidifying that the bond was fragile and inauthentic in the first place. But then there are relationships we simply outgrow, where the love hasn’t curdled into anger, but the sentiments we once shared have just faded away.

We become different people, and the bridge between us simply no longer reaches the other side.

But sometimes, when I look back, those memories still leave a soft ache in my chest. The shared laughter, the midnight calls, and those moments where we were so beautifully vulnerable. I’ve given so much of myself to these people that it hurts to realize that even after our lives were so deeply intertwined, we still reached a point where we stopped choosing to stay.

In the end, we become strangers who know each other’s deepest secrets, but no longer know how we take our coffee.

People we love in silence

(Photo from 500 Days of Summer (2009))

Are you full of love because you’re full of grief, or full of grief because you’re full of love?

To love someone is a lingering, endless thing. Even when the connection ends, the love doesn’t necessarily stop; it just has nowhere to go. When I stumble upon a quote they would have loved, my first instinct is still to share it with them. When I pass the places we used to go, I can’t help but wonder if life is kind to them. It is a quiet, heavy truth: you can stop being a part of someone’s life without ever truly being able to stop caring for their soul.

I keep a cemetery of letters for the people I can no longer touch. I write to them with a love that aches, thanking them for the ghost of every memory and every kindness. On these pages, time is a lie. We aren’t strangers or memories; we are simply “us,” exactly as we were.

It makes me wonder which came first: the love or the grief?

Do I know love because I know the grief of being left behind? Because I’ve learned that being alone and misunderstood feels like a stake through the heart? Or is it the other way around—do I know grief because the love I carry has turned to loss so many times that it became the language I speak?

It’s a cycle where one feeds the other. The more I open my heart to keep the loneliness at bay, the more I invite the mourning that follows when they leave. I’m not sure if I’m trying to heal my old wounds by loving others, or if I’m just destined to carry the weight of everyone I couldn't keep.

What I do know is that to love someone is a privilege, a fragile gift we’re lucky to hold for a while. It has taught me to cherish the quiet, ordinary moments while they’re still happening—before the laughter fades and the person becomes a memory.

Because in the end, all we really have is the choice to love deeply, even knowing that we might eventually have to carry that love alone.