I felt a blend of nostalgia for our early friendship, annoyance with myself for still pining for the past, and disappointment for what the future won’t hold. While working on the book, I learned there was a clinical term for this pain about a lost future: intrapsychic grief, which the hospital chaplain and writer J.S. Park describes as “grieving what could have been and will never be.” Like reading about romantic friendships and sworn brotherhoods from earlier centuries, seeing this term assured me that my reactions weren’t over-the-top. I’ve felt this form of grief, though with less
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