When you lose someone, you don’t just lose them when you say goodbye. You don’t just lose them when you say your final I love you, or when you watch them leave your apartment for the last time. When you lose someone, you don’t just lose them once. You lose them every single day, you lose them slowly.

See, you lose someone every morning when you wake up and you are aware of the fact that their fingers are no longer wrapped within yours. You lose them when you watch the sun dance with the wall beside your bed, when you remember how it looked splayed across their back at 6am.

You lose someone whenever you make a cup of coffee in their favourite mug. You lose someone when you hear the songs they showed you, when you stumble upon their sweater in the back of your closet, when a card they wrote you for your birthday pops out of the book you are reading and you are reminded of how deeply you were loved.

You lose someone when you lay in bed and you want to tell them about your day, but you can’t. You lose someone when you do not hear them rustling around your apartment, when the television shows they always watched are not filling your living room with background noise, when you no longer hear them brushing their teeth in the other room before jumping into your arms for the night.

You lose someone when you are laughing deeply amidst the people you care about, and they are not by your side. You lose someone when the cab ride home is quiet, when they are not there for you to lay your tired head upon.

You lose someone when you bury the hope you had, when you lay down your arms and stop fighting the urge to make things work despite the intensity of your feelings. You lose someone when the hurt subsides, when the confusion wanes, when it all becomes too exhausting to keep alive. You lose someone when you finally allow yourself to walk away, when you finally allow yourself to start healing, when you finally think about them and hope that they are healing too, that they are finding everything they needed to look for.

But the truth is, you never truly lose someone, because love is not a losing game. If your heart cared for someone, if it fought for someone, if it believed in someone; if it felt in a way that set someone apart, if it felt in a way that was honest, and all-consuming, and stunningly real — there is no going back. See, the best kind of love changes you. It teaches you and grows you. The best kind of love cannot be lost, it cannot be forgotten. It will always exist within you.