I Thought I Missed Him

There was a time when I couldn't tell the difference between missing a person and missing a feeling.

Everything felt tangled together.

I missed the hugs.

The kisses.

The way his hand fit into mine.

The inside jokes that no one else would understand.

The familiarity.

The routine.

The life I thought we were building.

When I missed those things, my mind automatically concluded,

"I must still want him back."

But healing has a funny way of separating things that once seemed inseparable.

Little by little, I began noticing that I wasn't always missing him.

Sometimes I was simply missing what it felt like to belong to someone.

Sometimes I was missing companionship.

Sometimes I was missing being chosen.

Sometimes I was missing the dream I had built in my mind more than the reality I had actually lived.

That realization was uncomfortable.

Because it forced me to ask a question I wasn't ready to answer.

"What exactly am I grieving?"

The answer changed almost every week.

Some days I was grieving the marriage I thought I had.

Other days I was grieving the marriage I never actually had.

Those are not the same loss.

One exists in memory.

The other exists in imagination.

Both hurt.

I remember one afternoon realizing that if someone could somehow remove every betrayal, every lie, every manipulation, every cruel word, every moment I felt small...

I would have wanted to go back.

Not because suffering is romantic.

But because what remained underneath all of that was the marriage I believed God intended us to have.

That's the part I was mourning.

Not chaos.

Not instability.

Not fear.

Love.

Or at least the possibility of it.

For a long time, I thought those realizations meant I hadn't healed.

Now I think they were part of healing.

Because healing isn't pretending the good never existed.

It's simply refusing to let the good erase the truth.

The truth is that there were beautiful moments.

The truth is also that the relationship became deeply unhealthy.

Both statements can exist without competing against one another.

One doesn't cancel the other.

Maybe that's what maturity feels like.

The ability to hold two painful truths without forcing either one to disappear.

These days, when I miss him, I pause before believing the first story my emotions tell me.

I ask myself,

"What am I actually missing?"

The answer surprises me more often than not.

Sometimes I'm missing certainty.

Sometimes I'm missing companionship.

Sometimes I'm simply tired.

Sometimes I'm lonely.

Sometimes I've had a hard day.

And sometimes...

I really do miss the man I married.

Not the man he became.

Not the man he is today.

The man I believed I had married.

There is a difference.

A painful one.

But an important one.

I've learned that naming the right grief changes everything.

You can't heal a wound you've misidentified.

And perhaps that's what God has been teaching me all along.

Not to stop grieving.

But to grieve honestly.

Because truth—even when it hurts—is always kinder than illusion.

💜