Incomplete Sentence

Sometimes a certain life chapter doesn’t end the way we want it to. They don’t give us clarity, an explanation, or a moment that can make the story feel complete. They simply stop mid version of who we are currently becoming. And somehow, they tend to be the hardest moments to grasp and get over, even years later. As humans, we are taught that closure is something that wraps itself around an ending. Every so often, we leave without knowing why things ended the way they did, and we don't get to ask the questions we had saved in our heads. 

There is a particular grief that comes with those unfinished chapters, not because they were too perfect to let go but because they had potential. We mourn about what it could have been if it had never ended too early, even if we knew it wasn’t sustainable. We grieve the conversations that never came to life, the growth that never had the chance to sprout, the endings that never gave us permission to move on. I vividly remember a conversation I had with a classmate, where she mentioned how it took her longer to get over a four months “situationship” than a two years relationship with her ex boyfriend. Truth is, she had fallen in love with the idea of being with him and mourned what could have been if she had been given the chance to be his girlfriend. But what she left out were the arguments that might have followed by the happy moments she imagined, the same kind of constant misunderstandings that ended her two years relationship. She had already experienced what it meant to be in a relationship that lasted two years. That chapter was painful but completed. The situationship, on the other hand, remained unfinished and harder to get over because it never had the chance to fully begin.

What makes it harder  is that unfinished chapters don’t always feel right to grieve over. From the outside, it can honestly look like nothing dramatic happened. But on the inside, it feels like carrying a story that is so close to your heart when no one else remembers about it. Grieving an unfinished chapter is being able to accept that not every story needs an ending and that some are meant to be incomplete; it’s meant to shape us, not stay with us.

Some chapters don’t finish.
They change you anyway.