The Ones We Couldn’t Save

a diary of a empathetic girl💌

May 31, 2025

There are people who live in the corners of your memory like sunlight through an old window—soft, faded, but still warm. People who knew you when you were younger, when the world was smaller, simpler, and maybe a little kinder. People you once looked at and thought, I hope you make it.

And then, one day, they don’t.

I saw his face on the news this week. A face I once smiled at in the school hallway. A boy who used to hold the door open for me, who worried about my asthma when I ran too hard in PE. A boy who saw me in the small, quiet way that mattered so much when we were just kids figuring life out. He was kind to me when it would’ve been easier not to be. And maybe that’s why this hurts so much.

Because now, that boy—the one I once shared gum with, maybe a secret or two—is gone in every way that counts. The version of him I knew is just a memory, sealed in time. The one I saw on the screen had handcuffs around his wrists and a look in his eyes I didn’t recognize. And it broke something in me. Not because I’m surprised… but because deep down, I always hoped he’d make it out. I hoped he’d be one of the ones who got free.

We don’t talk about the grief of watching someone lose a battle you prayed they’d win.

We don’t talk about how helpless it feels when someone you used to love—even just platonically, or as a kid—becomes someone else entirely.

We don’t talk about the ache of knowing you couldn’t have stopped it. That nothing you said or did or were ever would’ve been enough to change the ending.

But today, I want to.

Because I’m not just mourning who he is now. I’m mourning who he could’ve been. I’m mourning the little boy with scraped knees and a crooked smile. The boy who had a hard home life but was still soft with me. The boy I rooted for. The boy I believed in. The boy I couldn’t save.

There’s something cruel about the way life makes us feel responsible for other people’s pain when we’re the ones who tried to bring light. But that’s the heart I have. That’s the heart I’ll always have.

The kind that still hurts for someone who no longer exists in the way I remember them.

The kind that whispers, I wish you’d had more love.

I don’t have a resolution for this story. Just an ache in my chest and a hope that maybe, somewhere inside of him, he still remembers being good. Still remembers me. Still remembers a moment when the world hadn’t hardened him yet.

Some people are lessons. Some are wounds. Some are both.

But no matter what happens to him, I’ll always carry the version of him who was kind. Who looked out for me. Who held the door and told me to be careful.

And I’ll carry the sadness of knowing that wasn’t enough.

And if you’re someone who’s ever loved like that—softly, quietly, with everything you had for someone who couldn’t hold it—this is for you too.

It’s okay if you still feel it.

It’s okay if part of you aches when you didn’t expect it to.

It’s okay to grieve people who are still alive but no longer who they were.

It’s okay to carry both the memory and the mourning.

Because loving people—even imperfect, lost, or hurting people—is not weakness.

It means you had hope.

It means you tried.

It means your heart was open when theirs was already closing.

And that’s something to be proud of.

Not everyone keeps their tenderness in a world that asks us to be hard.