Grief moves in 3 slow steps, like a waltz you never agreed to dance.
First, it leads. It takes the hand of who you were and turns you gently at first, blurring the edges. Your name still sounds like yours, but it no longer fits the way it used to. You smile out of habit, answer out of memory, yet something essential has slipped out of rhythm. You are present, but slightly out of time.
Second, it pulls you closer. The music swells, and the room narrows. Your old self becomes a distant figure at the edge of the floor, watching as you follow grief’s count: one, two, three. You forget your steps. You forget your shape. The mirror reflects someone who moves correctly but feels unfamiliar, as if wearing a borrowed body.
Third, it turns again. Loss loosens its grip just enough to remind you that a dance implies two. You are not gone—you are becoming. The floor remembers your feet. The silence between notes grows softer. Identity does not return as it was; it reforms, altered by the spin, marked by the weight of another presence once held close.
In the end, you are still dancing. Not because the music is kind, but because stopping would mean disappearing entirely. And so you learn to move with grief, letting it lead until, slowly, almost imperceptibly, you begin to lead yourself again.