Alex Zandra

Brook brushed away some of the discarded confetti and party streamers, then sat down on the clean part of the bench with a sigh.

The silence was deafening.

It wasn't a true silence, to be clear; her colleagues were busy cleaning up after the Grand Festival, called in from their usual duties to handle this particularly tough job. But the friendly chatter of maids hard at work could hardly compare to the marvelous cacophony of the crowds that had shaken that very ground just a few hours earlier, before the sun rose.

It had been amazing. It had been life-changing. It had been. And now, it wasn't.

And it likely never would again.

Tears drip-dropped onto the bench; slowly at first, then flowing freely.

There would be other places. Other festivals. Other reasons to celebrate, to cheer louder than anyone ever had before. It was just hard to imagine them right now—and that was okay. Some things couldn't be rushed. Some emotions had to be felt all the way through, like every bend of a stream, with the promise of one day reaching the ocean.

Brook wiped the tears from her cheeks. She got up, straightened out her apron, and waved to her colleagues. Her friends. Her loved ones.

She smiled as they approached, hand in hand.

The day was still young, and there was a lot of work to do. But she wasn't alone; she never would be again. She could trust herself. Trust those closest to her. Trust that they'd find their way to brighter days.

Together.

Tears welled up again in her eyes, but there was very little sadness in them. Instead, they were filled with relief; with a profound sense of letting go.

—Fin.

I never learned to grieve.

I lived for decades, opened up my heart to countless people and places and things, lost a lot of them—but I never grieved their loss. I was never able to; I never learned how. I felt sad in the moment, and that was that. The rest, I pushed away. I had to, in order to survive. But, like all defense mechanisms born from trauma, that only gets you so far.

It all adds up.

When the pandemic started, I coincidentally began trauma therapy. I'm still at it, over four years later, because that kind of thing takes time. I've grown a lot as a person since then, and I can tell that I've made a lot of progress in a lot of very important places. But just as someone sitting on a rain-soaked curb watching heavy machinery tear their house down to its foundations because what started as moldy wallpaper turned out to be a cascade of issues running deeper than anyone had ever imagined, I am constantly faced with the realization that there's more. There's always more. It feels unending. But I know that if I keep at it, one day, all this exhausting hard work will end.

And then I'll be able to start rebuilding. The part after an ending, that I never got to see.

But the grieving, even once I start feeling it, even once I start understanding it—as I have been recently, having finally gotten around to that part of my therapeutic journey—the grieving will never end. If I've learned anything it's that it comes and goes, becomes more and less powerful over time, but it never truly ends. Maybe that's why I've been so afraid of starting to feel it this whole time.

It's funny, isn't it? By living my entire life in fear of endings, I've kept ignoring the one thing that never does.

But now I'm feeling it, at long last. And it hurts; it really hurts. But at least there's some relief in it, some release, as the weight of innumerable unfelt losses is being lifted from my shoulders, bit by bit. I'm going to miss a lot of people and places and things, but I won't miss the crushing feeling of all their unprocessed grief.

But I'll miss this place. I'm going to miss it so much.

You can get a lot done in a day, if you put your mind to it. If the stars align.

Looking back on the past 24 hours, the last 24 hours and change of a place that has meant the world to me, I can confidently say I did everything I could to live that day to its fullest. I enjoyed what I had while I had it, I participated in a temporary thing that brought me joy without focusing on the end looming closer and closer. I lived in the moment, at long last, in a way that's so difficult for me to do. I did my best.

The thing they don't tell you about doing your best—something I had to learn by myself, the hard way—is that you're not expected to do it all the time. You can't. It's not reasonable or sustainable. You can only do your best some of the time, and even then, the circumstances have to let you. You can't just do your best, you have to get lucky.

As someone who's designed games for decades, I've come to have a particular perspective on luck. It's a bit like spice; you have to use the right amount or else the result is either bland or unpalatable. But get it right, and you get to enjoy the best of both worlds: players feeling that they deserve their wins, and not blaming themselves for their losses.

So, yeah. That's the energy I've been trying to bring into how I approach my day-to-day. When I do my best, fantastic! I get to be proud of myself. But when I can't, I try not to beat myself up over it. Because sometimes it's not up to me.

I really did my best to help this place thrive! But it still ended. And that's okay.

I'm really grateful so many of us got so much time to say our goodbyes. We got really lucky.

Tonight, I say goodbye, and tomorrow, I get to see what happens next. And unlike so many of the other times I've grappled with loss, this time I'm actually feeling hopeful! Because this place changed me. This place change others. And now, we get to bring that change along with us as we go our separate ways.

Here are some of the ways cohost changed me.