Drafts; Unfiltered.

Notes on Death, Love and The Chances We Lose

I cried the day you died. I don’t know how to feel. I don’t know if I grieve or if I just exist. this ache is both too heavy and too hollow at the same time. It's a whole different kind of pain.

and to think of the concept of Death, is to almost go mad, you don't have a start and you don't know how to end, we end our thoughts when we finally make a decision, or when we see hope. for death? It's beyond us. and our heads are too small to comprehend.

Death Still? Unimaginable. Frightening. It isn’t only the ‘we can’t meet again in this world.’ It’s the finality. It shuts every door, even the ones I didn’t know were open.

Even if I disliked you, it would still hurt. Because death takes away even that, the right to dislike, the right to argue, the chance to change our minds. I can’t hate you anymore. I can’t forgive you either.

I could, but forgive for what? I never even took you that serious. Your actions couldn’t hold me, they couldn’t wound me deep enough to keep me chained. Somehow, I just have to let go — but even letting go feels like a trick, because death made the choice before I could.

I’ve always seen connection as something delicate, yet fierce. In friendships, I look for the space to be vulnerable, to laugh, to share humor, to sit with someone and know that my openness won’t be weaponized. If someone is intentional enough to see me before I even see myself, I am theirs. If they celebrate me without hesitation, I could move mountains for them.

Love, too, is unconventional. It is choosing someone when no one else can see why you do, when others look at you with confusion but you stay because you feel it. Love is sacrifice, fun, support, compromise, but above all, it is being there when no one else believes. I don’t scatter myself wide, I go deep with a few. Because I fear the break. I fear that I'd be in big trouble if I try to be friends with everyone. I fear the end. Why can’t we just continue to accept and know each other? Why must there always be a fracture? I fear that.

Exactly with you, we never got there. You didn’t allow me, and maybe I was scared too. We kept it shallow, like water we refused to dive into. We stood on opposite banks, looking, but never crossing.

But sometimes I imagine it different. I imagine you letting me in, even just a little. I imagine the conversations we could have had, the laughter spilling over when we realized we weren’t as different as we thought. I imagine you calling my name with familiarity, not formality, like it belonged in your mouth.

Maybe we would have been the kind of friends who argue but never break, who talk until dawn about nothing and everything. Maybe we would have shared the kind of silences that are comfortable, not empty. Maybe you would have known how far I go for those who choose me, and I would have seen the soft edges of you, the ones you kept hidden.

I imagine us trading stories, carrying each other’s burdens, even celebrating the little wins no one else cared about. I imagine knowing you in layers, the side you showed, the side you hid, the side you hadn’t discovered yet...

But all that stayed locked behind your distance, and my hesitation. and now, death has sealed it for good. just like that.

I think of that one day we spoke, short words, nothing deep. I brushed it off then, but now it loops in my head, unfinished, unsatisfying. I can’t even pretend we had memories worth holding, yet the little scraps, the barest moments, feel louder than silence.

and the truth? I was willing. If you had opened the door, even a crack, I would have stepped in. Because that’s who I am. But we stayed strangers wearing the mask of almost-friends, and now I’m left grieving a bond that never even began.

Mostly, I remember you not being there. I remember your absence more than your presence. I remember waiting, and you never came.

I remember your voice, sharp, ordinary, alive. Now the silence it left behind feels louder than anything else. Sometimes I think I still hear it in passing, like the air itself is teasing me, like memory and echo are conspiring to keep me restless.

But these are my thoughts, my feels. Telling them to others may or may not resonate, because we are not meant to understand everything — until we are no more.

I couldn’t stop myself from imagining that space you were laid in. Dark, lonely, small. The grave that holds you now, when you could once run around at home, loud and cheerful. Now it’s all you, and more than ever, it hurts. Not just for you, but for everyone no more.

Because we, the living, still have the chance — the chance to make things better, to get better, to align with the world while we are here. What of the dead? They are just there, in nothingness. On recount, regrets. Even for those who did well, in character and attitude, they would still wish they had done more. Because nothing is ever enough.

…Oh death, what did you do? You’ve stolen not just breath but possibility. Maybe, more than anything, I would have forced the friendship. I’d have, if I knew you’d leave sooner.

Because the thing about life is, we think we have time. We think we can delay the laughter, push the forgiveness, postpone the vulnerability until we’re ready. But no one is ever really ready. Death interrupts in the middle of sentences, in the middle of dreams, in the middle of becoming. and that interruption never gets corrected. no one can carry your legacy like you wish to, no one can be strong and weak like you. It never gets corrected or lived. that chapter is over.

It makes me wonder, what if our whole lives are just drafts? Drafts that death cuts short before we can edit, before we can polish. and maybe that’s why nothing feels enough — because nothing ever is.

and here’s the cruel joke: for the living, we can still try, we can still stumble, we can still mend. But for you, there is no “still.” For you, there is no next page, no alternate path, no second chance. Just silence.

I picture you there: alone, still, the world carrying on above you, like your laughter never shook its walls. I wonder if that silence presses heavy or if it’s just nothingness. and nothingness scares me more than pain.

I think, too, of us, the ones left behind. How we walk around with this knowledge that we could have loved better, forgiven quicker, spoken softer, laughed louder. We could have — but we didn’t. and that gap becomes the grief we carry, heavier than the body in the ground.

Death doesn’t just take the person. It takes the future, the what-ifs, the never-weres. It takes the comfort of thinking, “maybe tomorrow.” Because tomorrow isn’t promised — and now I know it like fire in my bones.

Oh death, you win every time. But maybe, maybe the only resistance we have left…is... is to live like you won’t. and you don’t just end a life, you end the chances. and that is the cruelest cut.