Sometimes we feel that certain things are slowly drifting away from us, yet we cannot make sense of it at that very moment; perhaps we even avoid making sense of it altogether.
Because meaning makes loss visible — once something is named, it has already, irreversibly, gone.
In time, things unravel; our desires, our needs, our lives change. Yet amid the rush of everyday life, we fail to notice that this change also brings certain endings with it.
Perhaps we do not wish to notice, because somewhere deep down we have already sensed that this awareness would bring us closer to certain farewells.
In those times, those people, those conversations — while everything seems to remain in its place — something quietly shifts within.
The things we do in the name of love and belonging no longer meet us with the same warmth; we realise that the sense of belonging no longer holds us, that we have somehow fallen outside of it.
We change, they change; and even when we feel that we can no longer remain in that moment or in that time, some part of us still tries to stay the same.
Because that place, that person, or that state of being is not only made of what is painful; within it lie the pieces that once kept us alive, the parts that once made us feel good.
To move away means not only to leave what hurts but also to let go of what once soothed.
That is why leaving is not easy — sometimes one cannot part not from the pain but from the warmth of what once was.
Change requires leaving the good behind as well; and perhaps it is this that makes some endings feel so heavy.
The Weight of What Once Was
Sometimes we have fought hard for what once was.
While shaping it in our own way, we have, without realising it, been shaped by it in return.
Over time, within that bond, we have adapted to its rhythm and its limits.
In trying to transform it, we have sometimes given up parts of ourselves — sometimes simply given up.
And when the possibility of beginning something new appears again, the thought of going through that effort all over once more frightens us.
The weight of building something new, the uncertainty of leaving what is familiar, to try again, to be wounded again, to be broken again — all of these make it a path we hesitate to take, even if it might eventually lead to a place we desire more deeply.
Thus, sometimes remaining in the old becomes something heavier than a mere emotional attachment; it becomes a way of holding on to our own effort, our own transformation.
Because knowing that, in the place where we once struggled, someone else might exist effortlessly — perhaps standing upon the tears we once shed — while we must begin again from the very start, is harder than we imagine.
The Quietest Form of Separation
We begin to feel that we no longer belong anywhere; we want both places deeply, yet at the same time, we want neither.
This state — where one is pulled in two directions, unable to tell which is the true “loss” — is the quietest form of separation.
These separations, over time, are like a faintly thinning thread.
It thins and thins, yet somehow seems as if it will never quite break.
It has been there for so long that we stop noticing its presence.
Yet with each passing day the thread loosens a little more, and one day, though we cannot say exactly when, it silently snaps at its weakest point.
Most endings are like this; no words are spoken, no door closes.
Everything appears as it should be, and yet nothing is ever lived the same way again.
Unspoken Goodbyes
Sometimes we hold onto something with all that we are, not realising it will be the last time we see it; and when we part, something shifts, and we can never meet it again, never be there as we once were.
Sometimes we do not even need to go far — perhaps we are still there with that thing; yet as we approach the ending, the anger that fills our chest eclipses every other feeling.
We pour that anger out, believing for a moment it will ease us.
But as time passes and the anger fades, a strange heaviness emerges within.
We realise we have neither grieved it nor covered it.
We have failed to say goodbye — not to that thing, nor to the part of ourselves that remained within it.
Perhaps it is the ones who left us halfway, perhaps a friendship we no longer wish to sustain, perhaps a small flat we wished to leave in anger because one wall was always damp with mould, perhaps an address where we began to understand ourselves for the first time, perhaps a childhood toy that once kept us company at night, or perhaps a love — and within them all, the version of ourselves that once existed alongside them remains close enough to remember, close enough to hurt, yet now too far to ever reach again.
The Silence That Remains
When we left, no one knew that those moments were the last; nor did we.
Looking back now, what remains is a silence within us, formed from the unnoticed endings that have gathered over time.
That silence belongs neither fully to the past nor to the present; it lingers somewhere in between, lived yet unfinished.
And sometimes, in the stillness of the night, when everything else is quiet, we meet that echo once more.
In that instant, we understand — what we left behind was not merely a time, but a part of ourselves that continues to live within us in its unfinished form.
In truth, nothing has really ended, because ending also means completion, and what we speak of has simply remained in a place without a name.
It allows neither return nor continuation; once we desired both, now both have become distant impossibilities.
To Complete, and To Be Completed
At that point, we realise that what we miss is not truly a wish to return to that moment.
Perhaps much time has passed since then; we sense, deep down, that we are no longer who we were when that separation occurred, that we cannot return to that version of ourselves.
We cannot go back — and even if we could, returning would no longer meet our need.
To relive what has already been, to see the same mouldy wall, to hold the same toy one more night, to share the same thoughts with the same people again, perhaps to argue — none of it would give us anything new.
Those moments are like shadows of what once sustained us, echoes that still live quietly within.
Even if we were to hold that toy again one night, as we place it back the next morning, we understand: that feeling never truly leaves; it only lives on within us until it finds completion.
That is why going back to something already finished no longer helps.
Yet there is one thing that does: to complete, and to be completed.
To be able to place a full stop, and thus to move forward.
Because sometimes closure does not come from fixing something or belonging to it again; it comes from accepting that it cannot be repaired, that it can no longer be ours — and by giving an ending, finally, to those stories we believe deserved completion yet never found it.
It comes with farewell.
The Farewell to the Self
With our farewells, we touch for one last time not only the places, the people, or the things, but also the versions of ourselves that took shape within them.
That touch is, in truth, a farewell to ourselves.
For in every parting, we leave behind not only what no longer belongs to us but also fragments of who we once were.
And there, in that farewell, we change too.
The person we are now no longer has to carry the weight of the past; the one who remained behind finally rests.
Both quietly let each other go.
An Ending That Completes Itself
This piece carries its own share of farewell — a small attempt to complete what was left unfinished.
Thank you.
With the hope that, somewhere within each reader, it may have walked beside you for a moment, and eased, even a little, the weight that our farewells leave behind.