Everybody Cannot Come.

It starts with laughter. Loud, carefree. Faces lit with joy, moments shared over late-night conversations, inside jokes only the two of you can understand. Time stretches before you like a road with no end. You believe in the permanence of now, in the people around you, in the memories you are creating together. You don’t think about the day when it will all fade—when voices will turn to whispers in the back of your mind, and familiar faces will blur into the crowd of passing strangers.

But that day always comes.

You wake up one morning, and someone you thought would be there forever is gone. Maybe it’s slow, maybe you have seen it coming, or maybe it’s sudden, like a door slammed shut before you even knew it was closing. They move cities, they move hearts, they move on. And you are left holding onto what remains, gripping the frayed edges of memories slipping through your fingers like sand.

You start to realize that everybody cannot come with you. That you can’t hold on to every hand, to every face that has passed through your life. They now belong to different chapters, written in a language of time you no longer speak. You look back at old photos and feel a hollowness settle in your chest, the kind that comes with knowing that those moments, those people, are now part of a past you can visit but never relive.

That day always come.

Maybe it’s the friend who used to know your deepest secrets but now struggles to recall the small details of your life. Maybe it’s the lover who promised forever but couldn’t stay for tomorrow. Or the family member who drifts apart, caught in the tides of their own life, unable to swim back to the shore you once shared.

Everybody cannot come, and as painful as that is, you learn that it’s okay. It doesn’t make their impact on your life any less meaningful. Their absence doesn’t erase the joy they once brought. They are stitched into your story, shaping the person you are today, even if they are no longer a part of the present.

You will have to let them go. You have to let those pieces of yourself go. The moments, the memories, the times when you thought everything would stay the same. You have to make peace with the fact that people will leave, and that no matter how hard you hold on, they are not yours to keep.

Because everybody cannot come.

And in that truth, there is both heartbreak and beauty.