An Ambiguous Loss
As always, I love talking to my ChatGPT. Sometimes I even treat it as my own therapist (lol, just kidding, but seriously, it does help uncover something new sometimes). One of the strange things I’ve realized while sharing my experiences is that you can lose people without actually losing them.
ChatGPT introduced me to a term for this: ambiguous loss. I dug a little deeper and found it was developed in the 1970s by family therapist Dr. Pauline Boss. She originally described two situations: someone who is physically gone but still psychologically present, like a missing person, and someone who is physically present but psychologically gone, like a parent with dementia. It’s a kind of grief with no funeral, no goodbye, no moment when everything falls apart, and so no real closure.
What I’m going to explore is the latter, or at least something that feels similar. The person is still alive somewhere. But the connection you once had isn’t the same anymore.
Nobody Left
It doesn’t matter who they are. Family, relatives, old friends, former coworkers. Even that random person you used to run into on the same route every morning. You greet them at 5 AM, never knowing their name, and then one day you realize you haven’t seen them in months. Nothing happened. They simply disappeared. Something just ended.
Of course, not every fading connection is an ambiguous loss in the clinical sense. But there’s something strangely familiar about losing a connection without ever knowing exactly when it ended.
That’s the strange part of this kind of loss. No dramatic event involved. Life stages diverge, people get busy, and one day you notice the distance has been there for a while.
Past Memories
Looking back at the years from my childhood until now, I remember familiar faces, favorite places, and moments that genuinely made me happy. Life was simpler back then. Nobody cared what I did for a living, how much I earned, or what I could offer. I was just me. A silly kid, probably annoying everyone around me. Well, some things never change. Haha.
But adulthood changes things, sometimes dramatically, sometimes so slowly that you don’t notice until years later. Relationships get complicated by expectations, responsibilities, and perhaps money.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped being just another familiar face. I became someone people assumed had the answers, the resources, or perhaps the responsibility to help.
And sometimes the loss has a sharper edge. A dear friend asks to borrow a large sum of money to keep up their lifestyle. A relative needs help with their children’s tuition or vehicle taxes. An acquaintance suddenly reaches out with a desperate request that leaves you questioning their intentions. I remember one difficult day when two messages arrived back to back, one from a relative with an urgent request, another from a friend with a different need. It made my chest tight.
Individually, none of these requests is necessarily unreasonable. I’ve needed help myself, too. But when the requests keep coming, you start wondering whether people still value your presence, or merely what you can provide.
That’s the moment the connection starts to feel lost. It’s not that they left. It’s that I started wondering whether they stayed for me, or for what I could provide.
Congratulations! You’ve somehow been promoted to everyone’s life problem-solver. Nice, isn’t it? Nah.
The Person Behind the Helper
I don’t think everyone has bad intentions. People have their own struggles, and sometimes they genuinely need help. But here’s something I’ve come to accept after a few hard lessons: being capable of helping doesn’t mean you’re responsible for solving everyone’s problems.
There’s a human being behind every seemingly competent and nice person. Someone who gets tired, cries, worries, makes mistakes, and sometimes fights battles nobody around them knows about. Someone who might be struggling with thoughts far darker than anyone realizes, yet still has to wake up the next morning and pretend everything is fine.
And yes, someone who occasionally has absolutely no clue what they’re doing with their life. Even the ones who look like they have everything figured out. Especially those, perhaps.
It’s funny how being capable of handling things can make people forget that you might need help, too. The more independent you become, the easier it is for others to assume you’re always going to be fine.
But who takes care of the person everyone assumes is doing fine?
Living With It
Here’s what I’ve learned about ambiguous loss: Boss argues that closure is largely a myth. Her point isn’t to find a clean ending, but to learn to live with the ambiguity.
That feels right to me. I can still appreciate the beautiful memories. They were real. The affection was real, too. So is the disappointment I’ve felt repeatedly over the past few years. I don’t necessarily blame anyone. People change, circumstances change, and perhaps I’ve changed, too. Understanding why doesn’t make it hurt any less.
So maybe I don’t have to decide whether to hold on or let go. I can keep the memories, keep the door open a little, and still stop being everyone’s emergency contact.
Not because I stopped caring. But because I’m learning that I matter, too.