No one tells you heartbreak feels like death.
Not because they’re gone—
but because they aren’t.

They’re still out there.
Still wearing the same smile.
Still laughing at new jokes.
Still waking up to sunlight,
just not next to you.

And that’s what makes it worse.

You don’t get the closure of a funeral.
No final goodbye.
No reason to hold the world still while you figure out how to live without them.
Instead, you’re left with everything still spinning
while the space they used to fill
hums like a wound that won’t close.

They didn’t die.
They just stopped loving you.
Quietly.
All at once.
Or maybe in pieces,
so small you missed the unraveling.

And now you do all the things grief demands—
cry in parking lots,
check your phone like it owes you resurrection,
wake up to silence and reach anyway.

But the world doesn’t treat it like grief.
Because they’re still alive.
Still around.
Still reachable—
just not by you.

That kind of ache doesn’t get sympathy.
It gets questions.
“Aren’t you over it yet?”
“At least they didn’t die.”
As if that makes it easier.
As if knowing they’re giving their love to someone else doesn’t kill you differently.

You see photos you’re not in.
Hear stories you weren’t there for.
Watch them become someone else’s “home.”
And it hurts.

Because they were yours.
And you were theirs.
Until you weren’t.

And now they exist in a world that still includes coffee and sunsets and music—
just without you.
Just fine.