What’s Rare?

As I walked out of my house at 5 am, I stopped and watched the fog engulfing the London streets for a minute. The air I was breathing in was colder than I had experienced in a while and it made my insides ache.

The mist was beckoning, pulling me closer. I wanted to walk into it so far, I would be lost forever. That was the feeling I got an hour after being told my mother has passed.

I remembered when others had told me they had lost a loved one. I couldn’t empathise then, as I didn’t really know how bad it could get. I had lost people but it hadn’t completely immobilised me. I carried on, feeling a faint sad from time to time.

This was different. This was agony. I wondered if this is what others felt when they lost their mothers. I told myself I wasn’t the only one. I should stop treating it as if it were special or worse in some way.

But it is special, and it is worse. It’s relative to me. This pain is the most acute kind. Never has my heart felt so completely broken, never have I felt so hurt. It is clear to me now how people lose their minds after losing someone they love.

It is not uncommon to lose someone, but the love I felt and thus the pain I feel is rare to me. Only I can understand the depths of it, only I can feel it in my own way. Pain is relative, pain is rare.