Grief Doesn’t Need to Fit Into Any Category

Episode 2 of My Grief Journey Series - When Grief Doesn’t Fit Any Category

For a long time, I struggled to find the right word to describe my grief.

I spent a year and a half trying to understand what I was feeling. I searched for a label that could explain it, but none of them seemed right.

Then one day, I realised something.

Maybe grief doesn’t need to fit into any category at all.

Maybe we don’t need a label to justify our sadness or prove that our grief is real.

As long as you have lost someone or something deeply important to you, and your heart continues to experience waves of sadness, love, gratitude, anger afterwards—that is grief.

Your unique grief.

The beginning of my grief

This is the second episode of my Grief Journey Series, where I share my personal journey through grief in the hope that it may help others feel less alone.

My former partner and I were together for four and a half years.

In September 2024, we made the difficult decision to end our relationship.

It wasn’t because we stopped caring about each other. Rather, we realised that although we loved and supported one another, we couldn’t see a future where marriage would work for us.

We had purchased our home together only a year earlier. Selling it immediately would have left both of us in debt, so we agreed to continue living under the same roof while we prepared for our financial settlement.

We became housemates.

Our plan was to take another year to save for a small unit’s deposit. This would allow us to get an apartment of our own when we did the financial settlement afterwards.

It wasn’t the future we had originally imagined, but we both believed it was the beginning of a new chapter.

Over the next few months, I slowly adjusted to life as a single woman again, even though we still shared the same home.

The Day Everything Changed

In January 2025, he told me he was going to a friend’s bucks party.

The last time I saw him, I simply asked,

“When will you be home?”

He smiled and said,

“I’m not sure. Probably around midnight.”

That was our final conversation.

The next morning, I noticed he hadn’t come home.

It felt unusual because he had never stayed out without letting me know, but I reminded myself that we had already broken up. We respected each other’s independence, so I didn’t interfere.

I went out to have lunch with a friend.

When I returned home later that afternoon, I found a police card wedged in the gap of my apartment door.

It asked me to contact the police urgently.

I called immediately.

Instead of telling me what had happened over the phone, they insisted on coming to my apartment in person.

At that moment, I knew something was terribly wrong.

When the officers arrived, they asked if I knew my former partner by stating his full name and date of birth.

I confirmed that I did.

Then they told me he had been involved in an accident the night before.

He had died at the scene.

They also reassured me that he hadn’t suffered.

The moment I heard those words, I burst into tears.

The very first thing I said was: “I never wanted him to die.”

We had broken up. But I never wanted him to die.

I wanted both of us to go on and have happy, meaningful lives.

A Grief That Didn’t Fit Any Category

After the police officers left, I called my friend, who came to my apartment immediately.

I’ll share more about the incredible support I received from my friends and the people around me in the future.

This post is about I struggled to understand for a long time - What exactly was this grief?

To most people, it looked simple.

Many people—including our parents and some colleagues—didn’t know we had already separated.

They believed I had lost my partner.

In my parents’ and my ex-partner's parents’ generation, they even looked at me like a person who lost a husband, which is never the case.

Others might have thought,

“But he was your ex.”

Neither description felt right.

I wasn’t grieving as a current partner.

But I wasn’t simply grieving an ex-boyfriend either.

There wasn’t a category that fully captured what I was experiencing.

For a long time, I searched for one.

Eventually, I realised that perhaps I didn’t need one.

Every Grief Is Unique

Our relationship had changed, but the importance of his life had not.

He was someone who had shaped my life in profound ways.

Without him, I would not be the person I am today.

The love had changed.

The relationship had changed.

But my gratitude hadn’t.

My care for his well-being hadn’t.

And when he died, my grief was real.

Throughout the past year and a half, my emotions have taken many different forms.

There has been heartbreak.

There has been anger.

There has been gratitude.

There has been sadness beyond words.

All of those emotions have belonged to my grief.

Today, I no longer feel the need to define it.

I believe every person’s grief is unique.

It doesn’t need to fit into society’s categories.

It doesn’t need a label to be valid.

If someone or something deeply important to you is gone, and your heart continues to carry that loss, then your grief is real.

And you don’t need anyone else’s permission to feel it.

You Are Not Alone 😊

Grief doesn't need to fit in any category. You are not alone.