You didn't get what you wanted in the way you wanted it.

Adult grief is more nuanced than I realized. Kinder, sometimes.

Aging feels like standing in an open frame with wind coming through. Mostly soft. Sharp when something shifts.

There can be tantrums or less buried in the move from child to adult—the moment one possibility closes and another opens and you realize what was is gone. There is also a real loss, even a small one. What you wanted and didn't get still matters.

You can grieve futures that will never exist because your life changed.

You can grieve what you had to let go of when you learned something new.

You can grieve that you're human and the landscape shifts like geology—slow, then sudden.

I feel sad that streets change when I look at them. I even grieve feeling better instead of worse, because what we had mattered too.

You can grieve wanting something. That matters. Emotions don't dissolve just because you refuse to name them.

One thing happened.

It's not what you wanted.