here is the secret that nobody knows

i think that telling others about a once-important relationship lessens it, somehow. as if in the telling and the sharing, their importance is, deliberately or otherwise, downplayed, reduced and simply made smaller by attempts to console, to empathise or to sympathise. but it's not. it's not small and it's not meant to be small. not yet.

and as long as it's big, no, it's not okay. no, you've never had a similar experience. no, you bloody don't know how i feel. because this is big. this is devastating. this is so enormous in its significance that i can't contain it. i drown in it. i am lost in it.

i think that eventually, in my own way, in my own time, i will take these memories and downsize them, miniaturise them, make them small enough that i can hold them in one hand, see them in one glance.

until then, no one will know.