Sometimes You Will Never Know The Answer

Sometimes you will never know the answer, and that will ultimately have to be okay.

Sometimes you will never know why the relationship ended. Sometimes, it’ll just end. It won’t end with a conversation or an epic goodbye — it’ll just stop. There’s a reason why they call it “ghosting.” One day that person you love will disappear, and there will be no more communication, and that will be that. And it will not be fun. I hope you never have to experience it, but if you do, please don’t get caught up in trying to figure out what went wrong, or why that person ghosted you they way they did. It will serve you no purpose. Figuring it out will not fix anything, and the energy it takes to try and “figure it out” will just drive you insane.

Take a breath. Recognize the relationship for what it was — remember what it taught you, and remember that this is not a reason to close off your heart to someone else.

Stay open.

Please, stay open.

Sometimes you will never know why you didn’t get the job. You’ll try to figure out what made the other candidate a better option. You’ll think of all the reasons, you’ll play out all of the scenarios, you’ll make a million different assumptions. But the bottom line is, you don’t know. You weren’t in that interview. You are not inside the mind of the interviewer. You don’t know what was said or what they saw. It will be frustrating to not know. It might make you angry. It might make you bitter. And that’s okay to feel that way and to express those things, just don’t live in that space for too long. There is a difference between feeling negative emotions and feeding negative emotions.

When you feed it, it will grow. If you feel it, it will be easier to let it go.

Feel it, and then let it go. Move on to the next interview and bring your best self, not the one who is angry about not getting the last position.

Stay open to the potential of a new door opening.

Please don’t worry about the one that has closed.

Sometimes you will never know why they died too soon. You will never know why they left this earth before you had the chance to say goodbye or tell them one last time how much you loved them or give them one last kiss. You will never know what they were thinking when they were in that car, or when they took those pills, or when they took their last breath. Not knowing this is awful. It’s beyond awful. It will wrench your heart from its chest. It will feel like you are being deprived of air and of oxygen. It will feel like sadness has seeped into your bones, into the core of your soul, and it will feel like there is not a shot in hell that you will ever be able to not feel this way ever again. It will hurt your heart and it will haunt your dreams, but sometimes you will never know.

And while the pain of loss is something that never fully goes away, only something that shapes our new normal and sense of self, it does become manageable with time.

Unfortunately, there is no timeline, no checkbox, nothing that will tell you when that feeling of manageability comes.

But it will.

One day, you’ll accept the loss and lack of goodbye as truth. One day you won’t feel it your bones as sharp. One day it won’t hurt your heart as much, and it won’t feel like a betrayal to laugh or to love again.

It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen one day.

Until then, let yourself grieve.

Until then, let yourself feel, too.

Always let yourself stay open. Always.