It is something close to grief, the slow realization that a person no longer means what they once did to you; that your heart no longer beats quicker upon hearing their voice; that their quirks now make you squirm instead of smile.

It is something close to a funeral to do something you have looked forward to and planned for and spoken at length about only to find nothing but dying glitter and suspicious dross where you expected gold and gemstones. You hold the artifact in your hands as if seeing it for the first time — in a sense you might as well have been, you have never felt such a total lack of passion or wanting for it before.

It is something close to a graveyard visit, that of visiting a place you would have fought and slaughtered to return to, only to be there now and sense a heavy, resounding nothingness. You have outgrown the place, your soul whispers — the building and surroundings hold nothing real or substantial, nothing beyond vague memories in the spiderwebbed halls of your mind. Only a few people there recognize you, themselves a few steps from the grave.

You feel guilty somehow, like the interest was a self-deception, a fiction, an ego-driven grasping after what was never yours to begin with.

And you would be correct.

And you would also feel cheated of the time and energy and attention you have given this particular facet of reality — the person, the hobby, the place that was once your world and now feel more distant than a stranger. For with strangers you at least have the unknown to flirt with and discover; with this you have only the known and the lack of any desire to continue desiring.

We experience this on repeat, telling ourselves we would do better next time — but some desperate part of us struggles to remain human, and so we fall in love again.

It is worth it, perhaps. There is no meaning to softness and interest if hard indifference is not an option.

But ah, this is loss, and a sort of grief to be acknowledged and felt.