The Function

There are losses that don’t register as loss at first.
No dramatic ending, no conflict, no clean line dividing before and after. Just a small shift in the architecture of your day. Something that once held weight slips out of place, and only then do you feel how much it had been carrying.

Work has been like that lately.
Not losing a person — losing a function.
The structure someone quietly held that made everything run smoother, lighter, sane.

For a long time, I had someone who could read the room, read the system, and read the moment without needing a full briefing. Someone who picked up half the chaos before it could land. When that function disappears, the day doesn’t feel sad; it just feels heavier in a way that’s hard to name but impossible to ignore.

This is what it looks like when a function leaves your life:

Tasks that used to split neatly now pile in the same corner.
Silence feels dense instead of calm.
You brace again, without meaning to.
You notice how much was possible because someone else helped carry it.

Losing a function doesn’t break your heart.
It rearranges your clarity.

It forces you to look at the version of yourself who once carried everything alone and decide whether you want to become that person again. Especially when the job itself is already shifting, already uncertain, already nudging you toward the question you’ve been avoiding.

And here’s the part that surprised me:
this loss doesn’t hit only one side.

The other person loses a function too.
Not in a sentimental way — in a structural one.

You were a translator of the chaos.
A stabilizer.
A quiet source of direction.
The part of the system that made overwhelm manageable.

They’ll adjust; people do.
But the architecture of their day will shift the way yours has, even if no one names it out loud. Losing a point of balance is rarely a solo experience.

Maybe that’s the real heart of it:

When a function leaves, the system has to remake itself.
Not in a dramatic collapse — in all the small, structural ways that shape how we move through our days.

And once you see that clearly, the question changes.
It stops being about loss.

It becomes much simpler, and much sharper:

Do I rebuild myself to keep carrying this alone,
or is this the moment I finally set the load down
and walk a different direction?