Grief is the price we pay for love, quoth Queen Elizabeth II (and she definitely knows grief). You love, you lose, you grieve, you swear you’ll never love again, you love more. You’re human and without love, you’re not human anymore. Inhuman and inhumane, in fact. Plenty of people suffer loss after loss after loss; the losses shock and hurt you. They empty you out and hit your heart like a ten ton truck. Sometimes you just wait, surrounded by the shrapnel of your entire life and your being. Sometimes everything hurts, sometimes nothing touches you at all. Sometimes you rage and despair. Sometimes your soul shakes and then tightens into the foetal position.

(I don’t give a fuck about the queen tbh.)

It isn’t limited to distance and death – it can be unrequited or impossible too. But we love regardless, we love because we know how much the…