How to grieve
someone who has
always been gone?
To recognize the hole
that was always there,
shaped
like them?
How to give up
on ghosts and fleeting glimpses,
to wipe away
the rose-tinted fantasies,
cease the child’s excuses,
see clearly
and finally
grow
up?
It is to grieve
all hope
of having had
a better past.
To cease praying
that all the suffering and lack
would be worth it.
To stop insisting
on happy endings
or closure.
To see that your whole life
was not
a phase.
Love
is accepting the whole truth.
And if,
once seeing them truthfully
you can no longer
love them,
then perhaps now
you can love
yourself.
© S. Rinderle, May 2025
C.E.N. = clinical term for Childhood Emotional Neglect
