Essay • 2025
Always be with you
On loss, and the people who stayed
I didn't know it would hurt this much.
A few months ago, I experienced loss. And somewhere in the middle of all that pain, I came to understand something I hadn't before — that the depth of grief is a kind of measurement. It tells you, quietly and without mercy, how much space that person had been holding inside you all along.
When someone who mattered is cut from your daily life — and "cut" is the right word, the only word — it leaves something that feels less like sadness and more like a wound. That summer, I learned in my whole body what people mean when they say their chest aches. That it isn't poetry. That it's just true. The season of mourning, the one no one who has loved something can escape, came and found me.
And yet.
It was also, strangely, a dazzling season.
I didn't walk through it alone. A text that simply asked how I was. Call me anytime, no matter the hour. An invitation to go hiking on the weekend, a gentle way of making sure I wouldn't have to be alone. Eyes that filled with tears just from imagining how I might be feeling. Walking alongside someone else's grief is never pleasant, and yet there were people who stayed. Who showed up, again and again, as if my pain were something they had chosen to carry too.
I didn't know I was surrounded by people like this.
I didn't know I was loved this much.
Maybe that's the strange gift loss sometimes brings — it shows you, in the sharpest possible light, what has always been there.
Maybe that's the strange gift loss sometimes brings — it shows you, in the sharpest possible light, what has always been there.
My summer was BITTERSWEET.
And so I dedicate this illustration to them. To the people who poured love into the hollow that loss left behind. To those who have been with me — in the joy, in the sorrow, in all the ordinary moments in between.
Always be with you: 달콤쌉싸름했던 그해 여름
상실의 아픔을 겪었다. 이렇게까지 아플 줄 몰랐다. 아파보고 나서야 비로소 알게 됐다. 아픔의 깊이가 곧, 그 존재가 내 안에서 차지하고 있던 자리의 크기였다는 것을.
중요했던 누군가가 일상에서 도려내어진다는 것은, '도려낸다'는 표현이 주는 감각 그대로, 마음 깊은 곳에 실제 통증을 남긴다. 심장이 저리다는 말이 비유가 아니라 문자 그대로라는 것을, 그 여름 온몸으로 배웠다. 소중한 것을 잃어본 사람이라면 누구도 피해갈 수 없는, 그 애도의 계절이 내게 찾아왔다.
그런데 동시에, 눈이 부신 시간이기도 했다.
나는 그 시간을 홀로 걷지 않았다. 안부를 묻는 문자, 밤이건 아침이건 언제든 전화하라는 말, 혼자 두지 않으려는 마음으로 슬며시 건네온 주말 하이킹 제안, 내 마음이 어떨까 상상하다 물기가 차오른 눈망울. 타인의 아픔의 시간을 함께 걷는 일이 결코 유쾌하지 않으련만, 기꺼이 자신의 일처럼 곁에 머물러준 사람들이 있었다.
이렇게 좋은 사람들이 내 가까이에 있었다는 것. 내가 이토록 무조건적으로 사랑받고 있다는 것. 그 놀랍고 고마운 사실을 아이러니하게도, 상실의 한복판에서 발견했다.
나의 여름은 달콤쌉싸름했다.
그래서 이 그림을 그 소중한 존재들에게 바친다. 상실의 구멍에 기꺼이 사랑을 퍼부어준 사람들에게. 기쁠 때도, 슬플 때도, 모든 순간 함께 해준 나의 사랑하는 사람들에게.