Nothing's broken. Something's missing.

You've been running diagnostics on yourself. Your sleep. Your diet. The weather. Your faith. You expected this stretch to feel lighter. So you keep hunting for the fault, and the hunting wears you out worse than the sadness does. You're looking for a malfunction. What you've got is a loss.

You kept it close. Good days, bad days, and every hard phone call in between. The cigarette sat in on your worst days and passed itself off as a friend. That much company leaves a hole when it goes. Hollow for a while isn't the same as broken.

It's like the weeks after a neighbor you saw every day moves away. Nothing's wrong with you. Walking past their door just feels strangely quiet. Grief and failure feel the same from the inside, but they ask for opposite things. Failure wants a fix. Grief only wants room. Call it grief, and it can finally start to move.

Give today a label before you give it a plan. I lost something I leaned on, and I'm sad. Let that one sentence be enough. God doesn't rush grieving people. He sits down with them. Lord, I miss it. Stay close. If the sadness is still this heavy weeks from now, bring your doctor into it. Letting someone help carry grief is part of doing it well. You only grieve what you've truly left.