δεκαεπτά||seventeen

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•I can't be running
back and forth
forever between grief
and high delight•

•I can't be running back and forth forever between grief and high delight•

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TRIGGER WARNING:
Mentions of blood, violence,
character death, etc. It's a very important part of the story,
but please proceed with caution.

➰ ➰ ➰

When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose them all at once; you lose them in pieces over a long time. The way the mail stops coming, and their scent slowly fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in their closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of them that are gone. It's just like when the day comes, and there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that they're gone, forever. But there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.

Grief can destroy you, or it can focus you. Only you can decide if a relationship was all for nothing and if it has to end in death, and you alone. Or, you can realize that every moment of it has more meaning than you dared to recognize at the time. So much meaning that it scares you. Because you just lived, just took for granted the love and laughter of each day, and didn't allow yourself to consider the sacredness of it. But when it's over and they're gone... you're alone.

You begin to see that it wasn't just a movie and a dinner together, not just watching sunsets together, not just scrubbing a floor or washing dishes together, or worrying over a high electric bill. It was everything, it was the why of life, every event and precious moment of it.

The answer to the mystery of existence is the love you shared, sometimes so imperfectly. And when the loss wakes you to the deeper beauty of it, to the sanctity of it, you can't get off your knees for a long time. You're driven to your knees, not by the weight of the loss, but by gratitude for what preceded the loss. And the ache is always there, but one day not the emptiness. Because to nurture the emptiness, to take solace in it, is to disrespect the gift of life.

Gianna feels that her brother will die over and over again for the rest of her life. Because grief is forever. It doesn't go away; it becomes a part of you, step for step, and breath for breath. She's not sure if she will never stop grieving Treyton, because she will never stop loving him. That's just how it is. Grief and love are conjoined, you don't get one without the other. All she can do is love him, and love the world. Gianna can emulate him, by living with a daring soul and a joyful spirit.

➰ ➰ ➰

Numb. After finding out the truth about her brother's death, Gianna can't help but to feel anything else. So many times previously, she's always seemed to feel things too much. And in the end, it only ever managed to make things worse. Since Treyton's death, developing a numbness to the things around her is the only way Gianna can stop herself from completely losing it.

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