Spirit healing time. Nothing New Age—just my old method of writing out my feelings on another Monday. No lessons here either. Just letting the rain fall.

It was a typical Saturday. I’d just finished with my morning run, and now, I took a break to check my phone for updates on friends. It started first with a single drop of realization, plopping down on my hand. I looked at it in wonder for an instant before making the decision to try and outrun it.

Friends come and go. Life is constantly moving on. Change is inevitable.

But the photos were still in my head. He’d gotten married. She’d gotten engaged. They’d had a kid. So what. It was typical for friends to become acquaintances to become “someone I used to know.”

Try as I might, however, I could not find shelter soon enough, and the raindrops, though still scarce, were now heartbeats spaced at closer intervals. Illogical fears and insecurities of old resurfaced, their leering grins focused on digging at past wounds.

Why were they able to find someone? Why does everyone seem to have an easier time finding love? And why am I having such a difficult time? Is there something wrong with me?

By now, the rain was a steady downpour, but I’d reached my house. As I stepped onto the front porch, the drizzle stopped. I tried to put the rain in the back of my mind and focused on the day ahead.

I’ve come to a certain age when enough people have come into my life and left. I’ve learned to accept this.

Later that day, I shared a meal with a friend. The rain was far from my mind. And then, my friend mentioned casually of his plans to eventually move away in a few years.

As I returned home, the clouds drew in once more. Now, it was inevitable, especially as I thought further of another close friend, a few of them actually, who have been growing more distant lately.

Life is in perpetual motion. People move around me, but I struggle to keep up.

The skies let loose. I was suddenly drenched in searing sadness, clothes soaked and weighed down by the heaviness of the storm. My spirit was drowning in the realization that the future still holds more goodbyes. The awareness that one day I will look down to find that the ribbons once tying my soul to others I considered dear will become weary and worn and tattered into shreds of a former life that will never—can never—be mended.

And the rain continues to fall.