We Grieve the Lives We Never Lived

Sometimes grief arrives when we least expect it. Recently, I was watching a documentary about a couple and their life together. There was something beautiful about hearing their story, the way they had built a life, a family, a history together. The way they had seemingly chosen each other, over and over again.

And unexpectedly, I felt sad. Not because I wanted my old life back. I don't. I left that life behind 16 years ago, and I have long accepted that my marriage was not what I had hoped it would be. If I am truthful, perhaps neither of us really wanted it from the beginning. We were young. We were scared. Plans had already been made. Guests had arrived. Sometimes when we are young, we don't yet have the courage to disappoint people, change direction, or say, I don't think this is right for me. And so we went ahead.

Looking back now, I also recognise that it was a choice I made. I believe part of healing is being able to take responsibility for our choices without using that responsibility to punish ourselves.

I could ask, Why didn't I leave? Why didn't I know better? Where did I go wrong?

Or I can look at that younger version of myself with compassion. She didn't know what I know now. Neither did the other person. Perhaps we were simply two young people who were too frightened to change the course we had already set in motion.

Today, I can look back and see the lessons. I can see how much I have grown. More importantly, I am deeply grateful for the life I have now and for the person I have become because of everything I have lived through.

And yet, every now and then, grief still comes knocking. Sometimes I grieve my youth. Sometimes I grieve the years that have passed. Sometimes I grieve the family life I imagined I would have. And sometimes, when I see a couple who have built something beautiful together, there is a small part of me that wonders what it might have been like to have had a marriage where two people learnt, repaired, grew and kept choosing one another.

There may even be a fleeting thought: Where did I go wrong? This is where comparison can become painful. We see somebody else's story and, for a moment, measure our life against theirs. We see the beautiful family, the long marriage, the photographs, the companionship, and our mind begins constructing the life we could have had. But we are comparing our lived reality with an imagined alternative. And none of us truly knows what another couple has had to endure, repair, forgive or work through to create the life we are witnessing.

So these days, when that grief comes, I don't fight it. I let myself feel sad. I let myself cry. Sometimes I even allow myself a little self-pity. I sit with the part of me that wanted something she never received. I don't tell her she should be grateful. I don't tell her she should be over it by now. I don't shame her because it has been 16 years. I simply let her grieve.

And interestingly, when we stop fighting our feelings, they often don't need to stay for very long. For me, sometimes it is fifteen minutes. A good cathartic cry. A moment of tenderness towards myself. And then something shifts. I remember where I am. I remember what I have.

I remember who I have become. And most importantly, I remember that while I cannot make different choices for the woman I was all those years ago, I can make choices for the woman I am today. Perhaps this is another part of healing that we don't talk about enough.

Healing doesn't necessarily mean reaching a place where the past can never make us sad again.

We can have accepted something and still grieve it. We can be grateful for our present and occasionally mourn our past. We can know that leaving was right and still feel sadness for what could not be repaired. We can love the person we have become and still have compassion for the younger person who didn't yet know how to choose herself. The important thing is perhaps not to build a home inside that grief.

• Visit it.

• Listen to it.

• Let the tears come if they need to.

• Hold that younger part of yourself with compassion rather than judgement.

• And then, when the wave passes, come back to the life that is here now.

Because the past may already have been written. But there are still choices available to us today. And perhaps that is where I choose to place my gratitude, not only in everything I have survived or learnt, but in knowing that I can still choose what I want the rest of my life to become.