...but what are we getting through, exactly? What's on the other side? What's the destination? Just more reality that you're not here, your person is not here, the hole is still in your chest, the vacancy in the world, at the dinner table, in the passenger seat of your car, in your photographs...is still there? What are we getting through exactly? What's pushing us along? The hope for a future when it doesn't hurt as much? But the only true foreseeable way to heal what hurts is for you to return, for your person to return. So what is this poor language we have around loss? Getting through. Like it's a challenge. Like it's a competition with yourself. Get through the hard part. Get through the hump, Get over what holds you back and keeps you from progressing, get through to the other side.
But even the other side is all just the same. Just repackaged. New memories. New traditions. Maybe new people. But the loss never changes. The vacancy never changes. You learn to function again with a gaping hole and a constant white noise in your mind humming on real truth: "Gone. Forever. Gone. Always. Gone. Forever. Gone. Always." You can't change it. You can't fix it. You can't make it be not so. You can get through and make it to the other side and find that it actually took you back in time, that time really is all a construct and traveling through it, around it, behind it, is all possible. It's not real. You can choose when you want to be. Read that again - WHEN you want to be. Not who. Not where. Not something forcing you to become another version of yourself, a better stronger version of yourself. Not a location that will change your fate, new scenery to distract you, but WHEN. A memory. A place that was. A place that was perfect and you were the perfect version of yourself for no other reason than you were there with the person you miss and want back more than anything, more than anyone ever has wanted anything.
Getting through is a myth. We need better language. The English language sometimes feels like it was only made to create words around working, business, capitalism, and conquering. It wasn't made to feel.