Something I wonder about a lot these days:

I've lost people slowly and fast, and cried my heart out for them. I've walked away from places and felt my insides creak and slowly fracture from the pain of knowing that I am leaving, and will probably never go back. I've lived under the shadow of loss, with my father's illness, from age 6 to the present. That's long enough to know and navigate every corner of that hollow, crushing space inside of me.

But none of these things has felt as devastating as the passing of a cat I knew and loved. Sometimes I wonder, wiping tears that flow of their own accord every.time.I'm.alone - How can this feel like this?! After thinking that I knew, for so long, what grief is, I suddenly realise - this is the first time I've really felt It.

People, you 'can' cry for, and there will always be arms to hold you as you sob for a grandmother, or a boyfriend (who didn't deserve a single teardrop), or a beloved first home. Even years after the event, people will nod knowingly, and say they understand, that it might never heal, but that it will get better. A cat, with whom you spent countless hours simply giving and receiving love, using no words, you cannot mourn for with others. How to describe to someone the loss of a world only you knew, the loss of a friend no one ever saw the way you did.