How do you grieve someone who is still alive?

There is no funeral. No last goodbye. No final moment in which someone tells you that this is it, that from tomorrow on, things will be different. There is no explanation for how they left.

They simply did.

And somehow, you are left behind trying to understand how you are supposed to mourn someone who is still somewhere in the world, still breathing, still living their life, while becoming a stranger in yours.

For me, it wasn't a family member. It wasn't my best friend. It wasn't even someone who had ever officially been my boyfriend.

It was someone who, without having that title, taught me more than I expected. Someone who was there through so many moments of my life, who accompanied me while I was becoming someone new, and who made me feel things that, years later, still live somewhere in my memory.

To understand why losing him felt like grief, I have to go back to the beginning.

The night I met him

It was during my first years of university, when I had moved to a new city to study.

I had left my family and friends behind and moved somewhere much bigger, louder, and full of people I didn't know. Everything felt exciting and terrifying at the same time. It was the beginning of a life I had chosen for myself, and I was determined to discover everything it had to offer.

Luckily, I didn't have to discover it completely alone.

My best friend was there with me. We went to parties together, worked on university assignments together, stayed awake during those endless nights when studying felt impossible, and met people who would sometimes stay in our lives and sometimes disappear almost as quickly as they had arrived.

One of those people was him.

I met Dylan near the end of my second year of university.

And it wasn't love at first sight.

Not even close.

There was no moment when I saw him across a crowded room and suddenly knew that he was going to matter to me. If anything, I barely noticed him.

That night, my best friend had met a tall, blond, slightly broad-shouldered guy she liked. I noticed he liked her too when, after nothing more than a glance and half a smile, he walked over to her. They started talking, and before I knew it, they were dancing.

I was bored.

That was when I noticed that the blond guy had come with a friend.

A much taller, dark-haired guy. Broad shoulders, athletic body, green eyes with a strange golden light in them.

He was attractive.

But he didn't catch my attention.

Not then.

We started talking, mostly shouting over the music. The conversation was ordinary at first: where we were from, what we studied, how old we were, what we did with our lives.

Dylan was twenty-seven. He came from a small town near the city and didn't go to university. He worked on his own land, with cattle and crops that he sold throughout the town and the surrounding areas.

But it wasn't his appearance that made me want to keep talking to him.

It was how easily he made me laugh.

There was something about the way he told stories, the way he could turn the smallest detail of his life into something interesting. I remember thinking that I could probably keep listening to him for hours.

And apparently, hours were exactly what we had.

At some point, the music stopped being important. The party became background noise. My best friend and the blond guy were still there, but somehow Dylan and I had created our own little conversation inside the chaos.

Then morning came.

We should have gone home.

Instead, none of us seemed particularly interested in saying goodbye.

So we went for breakfast.

The four of us sat outside at a little table, still carrying the remnants of the night with us. The kind of morning when everything feels slightly unreal: when the jokes are funnier than they should be, when you're exhausted but don't want to sleep yet, and when you know that going home means ending something you don't quite understand yet.

An elderly homeless man walked past us.I remember feeling sad when I saw him, and without thinking too much about it, I gave him my breakfast.

At the time, I didn't think it mattered.

Months later, Dylan told me that it was one of the moments that made him realise there was something about me beyond what he found physically attractive. It was the moment he realised that maybe what had started as one night could become something more.

And it did.

That morning didn't end with the usual goodbye of two people who had met at a party.

It became hours.

We talked about our lives as if we had known each other much longer than a few hours. We laughed until our faces hurt. We kissed. We had lunch together, walked around the city, and eventually ended the day sharing a glass of wine.

It was one of those days that feels strangely borrowed from a movie.

Not because anything extraordinary happened.

But because nothing had been planned, and somehow everything felt right.

When we finally said goodbye, it didn't feel like goodbye.

It felt like see you soon.

And it was.

When something becomes more.

My weeks slowly became visits from Dylan.

We would share a table while he worked and I studied. We spent long nights talking about absolutely everything and somehow never ran out of things to say.

One week became another.

Then weeks became months.

And somewhere along the way, without either of us announcing it, he became part of my life.

There were flowers every Saturday we went out. Little gifts every month. Romantic dinners underneath warm, dim lights. Sunday lunches with his family. Weekend escapes to nearby towns, trips to vineyards, quiet cabins where it felt like the rest of the world had disappeared, and even weekends at a spa where we did nothing but enjoy being together.

There were kisses.

There were I love yous.

There were all the little things that make two people look like a couple, even when neither of them has actually said, we are one.

And maybe that was part of my mistake.

By the end of the year, I thought we were together.

I thought there was an us.

When I had to return to my hometown for the holidays, I thought I was saying goodbye for while.

Instead, we spent Christmas together.

Then we went on vacation.

For two weeks, it was just the two of us on a paradise island. Sun, sea, excursions to nearby islands, nights at hotel parties, mornings together, and the strange feeling that maybe this was what being in love was supposed to feel like.

By the time we returned to the city, I had already decided in my head that we were a couple.

Apparently, nobody had told him.

So let me give you some advice:

Never assume a relationship has been confirmed until you have actually talked about what the relationship is.

Romantic gestures are beautiful.

Flowers are beautiful.

Vacations are beautiful.

“I love you” is beautiful.

But none of those things can replace a conversation.

Because eventually, reality catches up with the story you've been telling yourself.

And ours did.

When it started disappearing

When university started again and Dylan returned to work, something changed.

He began disappearing.

The weeks became days. The visits became shorter. The time we spent together became less frequent.

But the phone calls became longer.

And then came the arguments.

He began implying that when I went out to parties and bars, I wasn't simply going out with my friends.

I was meeting other people.

And by other people, he meant men.

Those were some of the hardest moments between us.

I couldn't understand how something that had felt so full for almost eight months could suddenly become a relationship made mostly of arguments.

My best friend had never liked him.

She had disliked him from the beginning, but because she saw how happy I was, she never tried to ruin it for me.

One afternoon, while we were walking together, she finally told me.

She said there was something about him she didn't trust. Something in the way his friend spoke about him had made her uncomfortable.

I didn't want to hear it.

Sometimes when you are happy, you don't want advice.

You want your happiness to be left alone.

And little by little, Dylan and I began moving further away from each other.

Until one night, everything finally broke.

I still remember being in my apartment.

I don't remember what started the argument.

I remember the shouting.

I remember the things we said because we knew exactly where the other person was vulnerable. I remember how, when people are angry enough, they can take the things that once made them feel safe with each other and turn them into weapons.

And then, suddenly, there was silence.

We were sitting on my bed.

Neither of us was shouting anymore.

Neither of us had anything left to say.

And somehow, in that silence, I knew.

Whatever we were, whatever we had been, whatever I had imagined we could become, it couldn't continue like this.

We both knew it.

There was no dramatic door slam.

No final cruel sentence.

Just an incredibly long hug.

And then he kissed my forehead.

And we said goodbye.

Grieving someone who didn't die

The hardest part wasn't the argument.

It wasn't even the goodbye.

It was waking up the next morning and realising that my life had not stopped, even though something inside it had.

I had to study without him.

Have afternoons without him.

Spend nights without his hands on me, without his gentle touch, without the person who had slowly become part of my routine.

And that is the cruel thing about grieving someone who is still alive.

You know they are somewhere.

You know they are waking up, going to work, laughing, eating dinner, meeting people, continuing their life.

You know that nothing physically happened to them.

And yet, the version of them that existed in your life is gone.

There was never really a relationship to mourn, either.

Not officially.

He never asked me to be his girlfriend.

I never asked him to be my boyfriend.

There was no anniversary date. No official beginning. No official ending.

And yet, there were flowers every Saturday.

There were gifts.

There were romantic dinners.

There were Sunday lunches with his family.

There were weekend trips.

There were kisses.

There were I love yous.

There were months of memories that looked, felt, and sometimes hurt exactly like a relationship.

So how do you mourn something that was never officially yours?

I think you simply allow yourself to mourn it anyway.

You don't need a label to justify your pain.

You don't need a relationship status to prove that something mattered to you.

If someone was important to you, losing them can hurt.

Even if nobody else understands why.

And you don't have to make the person a villain in order to move on.

Sometimes people hurt each other without being monsters.

Sometimes two people can love each other and still be wrong for each other.

Sometimes something can be beautiful and still not be meant to last.

What I learned

For a long time, I thought moving on meant forgetting.

I thought that if I still remembered the island, the wine, the flowers, the nights talking until morning, then maybe I wasn't over him.I was wrong.

Eventually, I learned that you can remember something without wanting it back.

You can miss a moment without wanting to return to the person who shared it with you.

You can be grateful for something that ended.

And you can love the memory of someone without loving them in the same way anymore.

I learned that people who are supposed to be part of your life for one night can sometimes stay for months, years, or even leave lessons that stay much longer than they did.

I learned that someone you barely notice can become someone you cannot imagine your life without.

I learned that sometimes the person you thought would stay becomes the person who teaches you how to let go.

I learned that not every meaningful relationship needs to become a forever relationship to have been real.

I learned that you should never build an entire future out of assumptions.

Talk.

Ask.

Clarify.

Don't let romantic gestures speak for conversations that need to happen.

I learned that you should listen to your friends when they are worried about you. Not blindly, because your life is still yours, but because sometimes the people who love you can see the things you don't want to see.

I learned that you don't have to hate someone to leave them.

You don't have to prove that they were terrible.

You don't need betrayal, cruelty, or some spectacular ending to justify walking away.

Sometimes this isn't working anymore is enough.

I learned that healing doesn't always look like forgetting.

Sometimes healing is being able to remember without breaking.

And perhaps the strangest thing I learned is that you can eventually become happy for someone you once wanted to keep for yourself.

I have seen Dylan move on.

I have seen him with someone else.

And, for a long time, I wondered what it would feel like.

Eventually, it stopped hurting.

I could look at him and feel something that surprised me more than sadness ever could:

gratitude.

I could be happy for him.

I could even be happy that he found with someone else the kind of certainty he never gave me.

And I could finally understand that his happiness didn't take anything away from mine.

Today, I don't miss him anymore.

Not in the way I once did.

I don't need him to come back.

I don't need another explanation.

I don't need him to tell me that what we had mattered.

I know that it did.

And perhaps that is enough.

I'm still meeting people.

I'm still learning what I want.

I'm getting to know someone new now, and this time I'm taking it slower. I'm giving myself time. I'm asking questions. I'm trying not to turn affection into a promise before the promise has actually been made.

Because now I know better.

I know that a beautiful story can still end.

I know that someone can be important to you without being your forever person.

And I know that sometimes the hardest goodbyes aren't the ones where someone disappears from the world.

They're the ones where someone continues living in it.

Somewhere.

Without you.

And you have to learn how to live with that.

Not by pretending they never mattered.

Not by erasing what happened.

But by accepting that something can have been beautiful, meaningful, and real—and still be over