there is a specific kind of emotional efficiency where you begin grieving something before it has actually left. the relationship is still technically happening. the dog is still asleep in the sun. the apartment still has your furniture in it. the television show has three episodes left. none of this stops your brain from dimming the lights and beginning the memorial slideshow.
i reblogged this because “holy shit i love grieving things before they’re gone” is funny in the way that an accurate diagnosis becomes funny when somebody puts it in lowercase. the addition — “and grieving things that never even happened” — turns it from a personal habit into a complete operating model.
the farewell tour begins immediately
anticipatory grief is a real term. Cleveland Clinic describes it as grief that begins before a loss, often when someone knows a death or major change is coming. that is the serious, useful definition. the less clinical version is that the human brain sees an ending on the horizon and starts pre-sadness as if tickets might sell out.
sometimes this prepares us. sometimes it lets us say what needs saying, pay attention, take pictures, or notice the ordinary details we would otherwise allow to pass without ceremony.
sometimes it simply means we spend the final good month of something acting like its widower.
the cruel little trick is that grief feels productive. worry feels like vigilance, and sadness feels like proof that we understood the stakes. if i rehearse the loss thoroughly enough, perhaps the actual loss will arrive, review my preparation, and waive the fee.
it never does. you can pay grief in advance, and it will still send the full invoice.
the museum of things that never happened
then there is the second category: grieving a future that existed entirely in draft form. a relationship that almost became something. a job you nearly got. the version of yourself who was definitely going to learn a language, move somewhere interesting, and own the correct number of plants.
these losses are especially irritating because there is no clean object to mourn. nothing ended because nothing officially began. you are standing at the funeral of a hypothetical, and the hypothetical did not even have the courtesy to leave photographs.
that does not make the feeling fake. imagined futures can occupy real space. we arrange decisions around them, furnish them, and begin living beside them. when they disappear, the vacancy is real even if the tenant never moved in.
you are allowed to remain in the present tense
i would love to claim that recognizing this habit has cured it. unfortunately, self-awareness is often just anxiety wearing a small employee badge. now i can grieve prematurely while also providing live commentary.
the only useful correction i know is embarrassingly simple: if the thing is still here, let it be here. do not convert every good moment into future evidence that good moments once existed. do not force a person, place, pet, season, or version of yourself to become a memory while it is still trying to have lunch.
and if the future you wanted never arrives, you can mourn it without arguing yourself into court over whether an imaginary event counts as a loss. the feeling already showed up. it has established residency. denying it will not make it return the keys.
grief is not a loyalty program. there are no points for starting early, no discount for suffering efficiently, and no premium tier where you become immune to the ending. we may as well stop trying to beat it to the address.
the thing is here until it is not. this is both the problem and, inconveniently, the whole gift.