I want to write so people feel less alone

"I admit I feel this."

Writers are often accused of writing for attention, as if the act itself is indulgent. But writing honestly is rarely comfortable. It is not only an act of expression. It is an act of admission.

To write something true requires saying, first to yourself:
I admit I feel this.

That kind of confession takes a certain bravery. Not because grief is rare, but because naming it is.

I receive messages often from people asking the same questions:
“How long does it take to move on?”
“How long did you cry?”
“How long does this pain last?”

I wish there were an equation for it. There isn’t.

The only honest answer I’ve ever found is the one Georgopulus wrote: Miss someone until they come back, or until you come back, until their absence in your life becomes something to be avoided at all costs. Miss them until you don’t have to anymore, until you’re reunited in your favorite booth in your favorite restaurant ordering your favorite meal, miss them until it feels like you never left. Or miss them until you can’t anymore, until the things you miss are identified and cataloged as things and not a person, until you figure out that easy company and long talks and unblinking, all-knowing eye contact will find you again the way they found you the first time. Miss someone until you don’t.

You’ll find yourself repeating the same process over and over again until you wake up on a different side of the bed and find yourself half-crazy wondering why you’ve been wasting your precious time on somebody who probably isn’t. And it’s okay that they aren’t. And it’s okay if you do.

That’s what writing has always been for me.

Not a performance of sadness, but a way of turning grief into something useful. A way of saying, I felt this too, so someone else does not feel so strange for feeling it.

Pain has a strange way of losing its authority when it is shared. What once felt unbearable becomes recognizable. And what is recognizable can be survived.

So however you choose to process your heart… write it, cry it, walk it out in silence… do it fully.

Do it until you realize you are no longer measuring the distance between you and what hurt you.