The Grief Case
An Enemies-to-Lovers Romance
What happens to love when the object of your affection isn’t there to reciprocate? This is not to be confused with unrequited love – that would be a whole other blog post (or several). Unrequited love leaves room for hope. The hope that someday your beloved will fall for you or, when you realize they were never worth your love in the first place, that they will fall off a cliff. A short one. Where the worst they’ll do is break their leg. Anyway, I digress. I’m talking about loss – permanent, no hope, it’s never gonna happen so the only sane thing to do is get over it, kind of loss. Maybe the person you’ve fallen for is a devoted spouse with children with the family & life of their dreams. Maybe your sexual orientations conflict. Side note: watch The Object of My Affection. Some critics had crap to say about it, but I happen to really like that movie (you can’t see me, but my face looks very smug right now ; ). Or maybe, God-forbid, the person you loved died. So, while I would much prefer the emotional trainwreck of an ill-advised super-crush on a man who only has eyes for his beautiful wife and his heart belongs to only her and always will. Or the utter disappointment of fantasizing about a future with a man who is hardwired to not be attracted to me. I love a person who died. And, while it’s not a romantic love, it’s a deep love. A love I was born with and, to answer my opening question, will die with. Because, in my experience, that’s what happens to love when loss is involved. Nothing happens to it. It just stays, even though the person I love didn’t.
I lost my grandmother in 2024. My beautiful, generous, loving grandmother. I thought grief had swallowed me whole, in one gulp, and left no crumbs. But eventually I started to find tiny pieces of myself here and there. In most instances, I was finding those pieces in the pages of romance novels. But I still had more healing to do, because more days than not, I generally felt down and a bit hopeless. Grief may or may not have been the villain in my story, but I was certainly the enemy in this enemies-to-lovers romance. It was my own actions and inactions that took me from my family and distracted me from my goals.
Two days after my grandmother’s birthday, a little over a year after she passed, I was feeling particularly crappy. It was my turn to choose a book for the little book club that consists of my mother, my cousin, and me (hey Book Babes!), so I chose a book called A Love Letter to Whiskey by Kandi Steiner. Now, I had been reading romance novels the entire time I’d been grieving, so this wasn’t the first by far. I had been heavily relying on the balance and calm that came from the genre’s structure and guaranteed happily ever afters. But this was the first book, during my grief, that made me feel what the characters were feeling. I felt the longing, the joy, the anticipation, and the disappointment. I remember how good the sting of hurt feelings felt against the inside of my chest and belly. The quick jolt of slight pain felt familiar. The weight of discomfort felt like an old friend. And, to my surprise, I welcomed them with open arms. After a year of going numb to avoid uncomfortable emotions, and immediately shutting down any time anything reminded me that I was supposed to be feeling, a cast of fictional characters pinched me to prove that I was awake. Every time B got in her own way, I felt seen. Validated, even. Like it was somehow okay that I had been getting in my own way for so long, because to err is human and all that. Jamie’s feelings for B inspired the notion in me that to someone, I am everything. The reminder was necessary since I’d lost someone who made me feel like I was everything, and was everything to me. Maybe Jamie was telling me that if I block out all the bad, I will also be blocking out the good. That hiding from pain is still hiding.
It’s been two years, one month, and six days since my angel got her wings, and every day without her is still the strangest and most unnatural thing ever. But I’m happy to say that I’m at least starting to figure it out. I realize that making myself smaller until I disappear wasn’t a good idea. But the growth that started at some point during the grieving process is slowly but surely getting me back to my original size. Because, what’s the point of the love between my grandmother and me surviving and boldly existing if I’m just going to slowly let myself fade away? Instead, I’m going to choose to live like I’m in a romance novel. I’m going to feel the angst and the heartbreak. I’m going to accept the third act breakups, because, they’re going to happen whether I want them to or not, and they make the HEA so much better. I’m going to continue to grow and choose to find the romance in the highs and the lows. I’m going to live my life in first-person and in present tense. And then, I’m going to continue to narrate the happy, sad, frustrating, embarrassing, and joyful events that make up my story. My POV has shifted, causing me to see things through pink lenses; always looking for the happy at the end of the after. No, after, what’s felt like forever, I’m smiling again. Every day. And laughing. And getting back to the things I enjoy. Once again, I look forward to all my next chapters. I look forward to living my life, romanticized.