I am still grieving versions of my life that never happened

Dear Delyara, That grief is quiet enough to be misunderstood, even by me. I grieve the career I thought I would build. The marriage I thought would deepen instead of flatten. The healthier body I assumed I would still be living in by now. The lighter relationship with money I imagined adulthood would bring. The inner confidence I thought experience would create, not erode. No one died. That’s what makes this kind of grief so hard to justify aloud. It is grief for unlived things. For possible selves. For futures that closed without ceremony. And because there is no funeral for that, it often sits in women silently while they continue making dinner and buying birthday cards and answering WhatsApps like nothing in them is mourning. Something in me is mourning. Often.