These Tears By Andy Grammer

Grieving a Marriage I Don’t Want Back

There are songs you hear.

And then there are songs that somehow find the exact place inside of you that you haven't quite figured out how to explain yet.

For me, one of those songs is “These Tears” by Andy Grammer.

Every time I hear it, I think about my marriage.

I think about my divorce.

And no matter how much time passes, there is something about this song that hits me right in the chest.

For a while, I think part of me wondered why.

Because I don't want my marriage back.

I don't sit here wishing that somehow everything could be undone and we could return to the life we had. I've done too much healing since then. I've learned too much about myself. I've rebuilt too many pieces of my life to pretend that going backward would somehow make everything right.

But I've realized something:

You can grieve something without wanting it back.

And maybe that's one of the strangest parts of divorce.

I Didn't Just Lose a Husband

When a marriage ends, you don't only lose the person you were married to.

You lose an entire version of your future.

At one point, I stood beside someone believing that this was it. This was the person I would grow old with. This was the family we were building. These were the traditions we'd continue. This was the life that would stretch out in front of us.

Obviously, that isn't how our story ended.

But knowing that doesn't erase the fact that I once believed in it.

There were real memories.

There were good moments mixed among the painful ones.

There were holidays, ordinary mornings, inside jokes, family moments and thousands of tiny pieces of everyday life that don't suddenly disappear because a judge signs divorce papers.

And I think that's what this song reaches inside of me and touches.

Not the part of me that wants him back.

The part of me that remembers the woman who once believed we would make it.

These Tears Don't Mean I Made the Wrong Choice

This might be one of the biggest things I've learned through healing:

Crying about something doesn't mean you regret leaving it behind.

Missing pieces of your old life doesn't mean you belong there.

Remembering the good doesn't mean you have to forget the bad.

And mourning what could have been doesn't mean you aren't grateful for what your life is becoming.

Those things can exist together.

I can know that my marriage needed to end and still be sad that it did.

I can look back at certain memories and smile without wishing I could crawl back into them.

I can remember who we once were without pretending that's who we would still be today.

And I can cry when a song reminds me of all of it.

Maybe those tears aren't proof that I'm still stuck there.

Maybe they're proof that I'm finally able to look back without needing to run back.

Letting Go Isn't Erasing

One of the things I've struggled with is this idea that healing is supposed to eventually make you indifferent.

Like someday you're supposed to look back and feel absolutely nothing.

I don't think that's how it works.

At least it hasn't been that way for me.

My marriage was part of my life. It shaped me. It gave me memories, lessons, heartbreak and pieces of a family that will always matter to me.

I can't erase that chapter.

And honestly, I don't think I need to.

Healing doesn't require me to burn the old pages.

It just means I stopped trying to keep writing a story that had already ended.

That's a very different thing.

The Woman on the Other Side

Sometimes I think about the woman I was when my marriage was falling apart.

She had absolutely no idea what was waiting for her.

She didn't know how many times she would have to start over.

She didn't know how lonely some of it would feel.

She didn't know how many nights she'd question whether she could actually do this.

But she also didn't know what she was capable of yet.

She couldn't see the woman on the other side.

I can.

Because I'm her now.

Not completely healed. Not magically untouched by everything that happened. Not someone who never looks backward.

Just someone who kept going.

Someone who discovered that losing the future she thought she was supposed to have didn't mean she had no future at all.

So I Let the Song Play

I don't skip “These Tears.”

Even when it hurts.

Even when suddenly I'm remembering things I haven't thought about in months.

Even when, for a few minutes, I'm grieving a marriage that I know I don't want back.

I let myself feel it.

Because maybe healing isn't reaching a point where the memories stop hurting completely.

Maybe healing is being able to sit beside those memories without letting them pull you backward.

Maybe it's finally understanding that something can have mattered deeply and still be over.

And maybe sometimes letting go happens exactly like that—

one memory,

one song,

and one tear at a time.

This is part of my soundtrack to healing.

And apparently, this song was waiting until I was ready to understand why.