The soup of emotions

We often think of emotions as neat and progressive.

One arrives.

It leaves.

Another takes its place.

But it’s rarely like that.

Our inner world is more like an emotional soup - flavours mingling, clashing, surprising us with combinations that don’t always make sense on the surface.

You can laugh with friends at a party while aching for the person who isn’t there.

You can feel relief and grief in the same breath.

You can carry joy in one hand and sorrow in the other.

And later in grief, guilt sometimes slips in too - guilt for smiling, for living, for finding light again. As if healing means forgetting. As if love can evaporate.

But love doesn’t disappear.

And neither does grief.

It weaves itself into you.

Over time it may not colour every corner of your vision, but it’s still there - sometimes soft, sometimes sudden and sharp.

Grief is love with nowhere to go.

And just like love, it never truly ends.

Whatever you’re feeling - all at once, or not at all - is valid.

You don’t need to justify it.

You don’t need to explain.

Being with what is, messy or tender, is enough.

You’re not alone in the soup.