Grieving What Never Came

Dear Delyara, I think I am grieving something I never had. That might be the hardest kind of grief to explain. Not a death. Not a breakup. Not a single event I can point to and say, “There, that is what happened.” I mean the childhood I wish had been softer. The safety I wish had felt normal. The kind of love that did not need to be earned. The version of myself that might have existed if I had been held differently. How do you mourn what never arrived?