You just can't even

Don't ever compare your bitter breakup or destructive divorce to my grief at the death of my wife. I know they are both a loss, an emptiness, a feeling of loneliness and regret. Maybe there is something there akin to grief. I guess you could say a love died in both scenarios -- figuratively.

But my dead love left a corpse. That's not a metaphor, allegory, image, symbol, analog or figure of speech. Your dead love has a person that is still breathing, still walking around, still paying bills and texting. You can still say things like "maybe one day we'll get back together." For me, the equivalent would be "maybe one day I'll take her remains to a witch doctor and see if she can come back as a zombie."

If you and your lover have parted ways, I'm sure there are profound feelings of loss and/or betrayal like exist with grief. I can't even imagine what that's like. But you can't imagine what it's like for me to've literally, not figuratively, watched my love die. I needed a funeral director, not a lawyer. She didn't take half her stuff when she left, I still have everything. If I want to email her, there's no warm body there that will read the subject heading and maybe delete the message. I'll never accidentally bump into my wife at the store or see her carrying on on someone else's facebook page. I'll never see her again, not even for a second. I'll never hear her voice again except in recordings. I'll never come to terms with why she left or 'go our separate ways.'

If you and your lover split up, no matter how traumatizing or disturbing the process is, there is still a chance, however remote, that you two could get back together somehow. Even if the chance is only .000000000001%, that chance is still greater than zero, which is what I'm locked in at. And that ridiculously small percentage makes all the difference in the world. If there was a .000000000001% chance for my wife to still be alive, you wouldn't be reading this right now.