To love someone is to attend a thousand funerals of beings they used to be.

• The beings they became too exhausted to maintain.
• The beings they stopped recognizing inside themself anymore.
• The beings they grew out of.
• All the beings they never grew into.

Sometimes we want the people we love to be who they were in the past, or who they could be in the future; to get their spark back when it burns out; to become found when they are lost. But it is not our job to hold anyone accountable to the people they used to be or will be. It is our job to travel with them between each version and to honor what emerges along the way, whether that be a broght fire or a flickering flame that temporarily fills the room with a necessary darkness.