the quiet weight of what i never unpacked

i think i’ve gotten better at grief.
not in the way people write about it, though—
not the clean, step-by-step healing they try to sell in books or podcasts.
just better at carrying it quietly.
like a stone in my pocket
i stopped noticing until it made holes in every pair of jeans.

grief was never foreign to me.
it showed up with different names, different faces.
sometimes it came with death,
sometimes with distance,
sometimes with silence.
but it always came down to the same thing:
losing something. someone.
some version of myself i never got to say goodbye to.

i told myself i’ve learned to manage my emotions.
i wore that like a badge—proof of strength.
but lately, i’ve been wondering if i really learned anything
or if i just buried all the sharp pieces deep enough
to stop them from cutting me in public.

what if all i did was press mute?
what if the grief is still in there,
alive and waiting,
sitting in the dark with its back against the door,
just waiting for a crack of light to slip through?

i never told anyone how often i feel like i'm still grieving things
that don’t have funerals.
friendships that faded without fights.
versions of me that only existed in someone else’s eyes.
dreams i outgrew before they had the chance to bloom.
it’s hard to mourn what you can’t point to.

sometimes i think i confuse numbness with growth.
because not crying feels like control.
because silence feels like maturity.
but what if i’ve just grown used to holding it all in?
what if healing, for me, just looked like hiding better?

i wish i could say all this out loud.
but i don’t.
not because i’m afraid of being vulnerable—
but because i’m afraid no one will understand the language i’ve built
from all the unsaid things.

grief has never been about the moment someone or something leaves.
it’s about the echo that follows.
the way it reshapes silence.
the way it makes you remember yourself in pieces.

i’m learning, slowly,
that just because i’ve stopped talking about it
doesn’t mean it stopped living inside me.
some things stay.
quiet.
uninvited.
and still…
they stay.