Mourning a relationship is a strange feeling.

It’s hard to mourn an intangible thing.

You can’t reach out and touch a relationship, yet when it’s gone, it feels like a physical thing has left your life.

A relationship feeds on love. When the love is abundant and pure, the relationship is like full, healthy, pink lungs. Inhaling and exhaling, providing the rest of the body with the energy it needs to survive. It receives the love that circulates it, basks in it, and radiates it outwards.

But sometimes, even with all the love, other, negative things can start to build up.

Jealousy, envy, and insecurity are like the beginnings of cancer on healthy lungs. Slowly but surely, they diminish the efficiency. Suddenly, the love doesn’t flow so freely any more. It is obstructed.

Other times, there simply isn’t enough love to keep the relationship healthy. It begins to suffocate and wither. Whether the love is diminishing from one side or both. Eventually, the lungs will stop There’s nothing left to breathe.

But even healthy lungs can suddenly stop. For no apparent reason. It can’t be explained. They just collapse.

Whether there have been signs, a time to prepare, or the relationship just ends abruptly, leaving us wondering what on earth went wrong, it hurts either way.

It may have been a defective relationship, but it was a part of us. A living, breathing, part of our life. And when it’s gone, it leaves a hole in our chest. Where we used to feel light and love, we now feel empty.

Eventually, the space will grow smaller and smaller. The pain will lessen with everyday that passes. But it seems as though there will always be a little hole there. A little reminder of what once lived there.

One day, a new relationship will take it’s place. New lungs will develop. With every inhale, growing stronger. We will remember what it’s like to be filled with love and light.

Hopefully the new will be even greater than the old. But we will always have the scar. The reminder of what was.

Love elephant and want to go steady?

Sign up for our (curated) daily and weekly newsletters!

Editorial Assistant: Karissa Kneeland / Editor: Catherine Monkman

Photo: Wikimedia Commons