Mind The Gap (A poem on grief)

There is a gap nobody talks about.Not the gap between who you were and who you are becoming. Not the gap between where you are and where you want to be. I mean the one that opens up inside you when something ends. When someone leaves. When you leave. When a version of life you had quietly counted on quietly disappears.Grief is not always loud. Sometimes it doesn’t announce itself at all. It just sits there -in the pause between one thought and the next. In the moment you reach for your phone to tell someone something, and then remember. On a Sunday afternoon, that used to mean something and now just means quiet.We were never really taught how to grieve. We were taught how to recover. How to bounce back. How to find the silver lining, the lesson, the growth. And all of that can be true - and also, sometimes something just needs to be mourned. Without the lesson. Without the reframe. Without being made useful.I wrote Mind the Gap in one of those spaces. The in-between place. Not in the acute pain of something ending but in the strange, quiet aftermath of the unknown space. When the world had moved on, and I hadn’t quite. When I was expected to be fine, and something in me was still sitting with the loss, wondering why no one had named it yet.Grief is not just for death. It is for the relationship that ended. The friendship that quietly dissolved. The version of yourself you had to let go of to become who you are now. The career that didn’t work out. The city you left. The future you had mapped in your head that never came to be.All of that deserves to be grieved. You are allowed to sit in the gap. You are allowed to not be over it yet. You are allowed to feel the weight of what was, even as you choose what comes next.The gap is not a sign you are stuck. It is a sign you love something. That it matters or mattered. That you were present enough to feel the loss of it.And in my experience, the only way out of the gap is through it. Not around it. Not above it. Not by filling it with noise and motion until it goes quiet. Through it. Sitting with it. Writing it down. Saying out loud - this hurt, and it mattered, and I am still here.That is what this poem is. A companion for the gap. Something to sit with you in the in-between.If this landed somewhere real in you, I want you to know you are not alone in the gap.And if you are feeling stuck in a way that goes beyond grief, if you have been waiting to find your way back to yourself for a while now, I have been building something for exactly that.30 Days to Unstuck is a daily audio series. Five minutes each morning. Thirty days. This is for the person who knows they are meant for more and just needs to find their way back.It is not a productivity programme. It is not about doing more. It is about remembering who you are underneath everything that got layered on top.The full series drops soon. Join the waitlist at 30 Days To Unstuck. Waitlist members hear first and receive early access.The journey back starts here. 🤍Thanks for reading Unplugwithani! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. To hear more, visit anisabutt.substack.com