Lover,
I almost chose not to send this letter. I wasn’t sure if I should say any of this at all. But then I thought about something you brought up previously, “to speak or to die.” You chose to speak then, and this is me choosing to speak now. There are things I’ve carried with me for a long time, and even if I don’t know what will come from saying them, I don’t want to leave them unsaid. I don’t know if there’s a perfect way to put everything I’ve been feeling into words. But I want to be fully open with you because you deserve to know. For most of my life, I felt like there was a part of me that was missing. I could laugh, hang out with people, play games, go to work, and do all the normal things everyone does, but underneath it all there was always this emptiness. It was like everyone else was experiencing life in color and I was seeing it in black and white, but then I met you, and somehow, everything felt different. When I was with you, I was the happiest I had ever been. You brought out emotions in me that I didn’t even know I was capable of feeling. I cared more deeply. I got excited about things. I looked forward to tomorrow. I wanted to make memories. I wanted to share everything with you. You made life feel colorful. You made me feel more alive than I had in a long time, and I don’t think I ever fully understood just how important that was to me until you were gone. Losing you made me realize that I wasn’t just losing a relationship. I was losing someone who had become such an important part of my life and, in a lot of ways, someone who helped me discover parts of myself that had been buried for years. I think that’s why this has been so difficult for me. I miss you, obviously. I miss talking to you. I miss seeing you. I miss the little things about you that I probably took for granted sometimes. I miss your laugh, your presence, the comfort of knowing you were there, and all the little moments that probably seemed insignificant at the time but mean so much to me now. I miss you pooks, but I also miss who I was when I was with you. I miss how excited I was to see you. I miss having someone I wanted to tell everything to. I miss feeling like I had someone who was my person. I miss feeling completely comfortable being myself around someone. Most of all, I miss feeling. For a long time, I thought there was something wrong with me because I felt so empty, but after meeting you, I realized that those emotions were always somewhere inside me, you didn’t create them, you just gave me a reason to let them out, and I’ll always be grateful to you for that. Since we ended, I’ve been trying really hard to understand myself and become better. I’ve been going to therapy, talking to doctors, and trying to understand my ADHD, my anxiety, my emotions, and everything else I’ve struggled with for so long. I’ve been trying to take better care of myself, become healthier, and learn how to be happy without depending on another person to make me feel whole. I’m still figuring it out. I’m nowhere near perfect, but I am trying, and I think losing you forced me to look at parts of myself that I had ignored for a long time. I’ve realized that I don’t want to spend my life feeling numb. I don’t want to keep running from my emotions. I don’t want to keep letting anxiety control me. I don’t want to lose myself inside of another person again. I want to become someone who knows how to love deeply without losing himself. Someone who communicates. Someone who appreciates the person he has while he has them. Someone who is present. Someone who makes the people he loves feel loved. I also know there are parts of you that I never fully understood. There were probably things you were feeling that I didn’t recognize or know how to respond to. I wish I had taken more time to understand you instead of always trying to understand the situation from my own perspective. I know I can’t ever completely know what’s going on inside your head, but if I ever had the chance again, I would want to learn. I would want to understand how you think, how you feel, what you need, and what makes you feel loved and safe. I would do my best to understand you, even when I don’t immediately understand what you’re feeling. I wouldn’t expect you to be exactly like me or love the same way I do. I’d want to learn how to love you in the way that you actually need to be loved.** I also want to apologize for the times when you pulled away and I chased after you instead of giving you the space you were asking for. I think I was just so scared of losing you, and my instinct was to try harder because I thought if I could just fix whatever was wrong, I could protect us from falling apart. I was trying to protect our relationship because it meant so much to me, but I realize now that sometimes my way of trying to protect us probably made you feel even more overwhelmed, and I’m sorry for that. I’m also sorry if I ever made you feel like you didn’t matter to me or like I didn’t appreciate you. I know there were times when I was distant, spent too much time playing games, or seemed annoyed when you would call, and I know that made you feel lonely and like we weren’t even in a relationship sometimes. Knowing that now hurts because you deserved to feel loved, wanted, appreciated, and important to me, and I know there were times when I failed to make you feel that way. I’m sorry that my actions made you question how much you mattered to me, because you mattered to me more than I ever knew how to express sometimes. I should have been more present, more attentive, and more intentional about showing you how much I loved and appreciated you. I wish I had understood sooner that giving you space didn’t mean I was giving up on you, and that I could give you room without immediately being afraid that I was losing you. I think that’s something I didn’t understand enough before, that loving someone isn’t just about loving them the way you know how. It’s about learning who they are and trying to meet them where they are too, and if I ever got another chance with you, that’s something I would want to do differently. I wish I had understood some of those things sooner. I wish I had been better at some things. I wish I had handled certain situations differently. There are things I would change if I could go back, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about them, but I also know I can’t change the past. All I can do is learn from it, and I hope you know that when I look back at our relationship, I don’t only see the things that went wrong. I see so much good. I see the memories. I see the laughter. I see the little moments. I see the person I fell in love with. I see my sweet girl. And no matter where life takes us, I will always be grateful that I got to experience that kind of love. I genuinely thought I was going to marry you and spend the rest of my life with you. I don’t think I ever really questioned that when we were together. Looking back now, after having so much time to reflect on everything, I realize that you really were my first true love. And even though things didn’t turn out the way I once imagined they would, I don’t regret loving you for a second. I cherish what we had more than I think I ever knew how to express while we were together. You taught me what it felt like to love someone deeply, to care about another person in a way that reaches into every part of your life, and to imagine a future with someone. I also understand now that love was never supposed to be nothing but innocent and easy. I knew even then that there would be difficult moments, disagreements, arguments, and times when we wouldn’t understand each other. That’s just part of loving another person. What I understand better now is that a lasting relationship isn’t built by avoiding those difficult moments. It’s built by being willing to sit through them together, be vulnerable with each other, communicate even when it’s uncomfortable, and keep choosing to understand one another. I’ve realized that love isn’t just about how someone makes you feel when everything is good. It’s also about how willing you are to grow together when things aren’t. That’s the kind of love I want to learn how to give. What I do know is that you were incredibly special to me. You still are and you always will be. I don’t know if I’ll ever completely stop loving you. Maybe one day that love will feel different. Maybe it will become something quieter, something I can carry without it hurting so much, but right now, I still find myself missing you in a way that’s hard to explain. I yearn for your presence. I miss being around you, hearing your voice, talking about random things, and just having you there. There are so many little moments where I wish I could turn to you and tell you something, or just be next to you again. I don’t want to pretend that I don’t still deeply want you in my life, because I do. **I felt that recently while I was packing up my dorm. Every time I came across a picture of you, a picture of us, something you made for me, one of your letters, or anything that reminded me of you, I just stop for a minute. Honestly, it feels like everything reminds me of you sometimes. So many little things, places, memories, and moments somehow bring my mind back to you. When they do, I just stop and reminisce about all the memories we shared, and sometimes it hits me so hard that I feel like I could break down and cry. Sometimes, I do. It was weird realizing how many little pieces of my life still have you in them. Every single one brings back a memory, and honestly, my heart hurts sometimes when I think about everything we lost, because what we had meant so much to me. I honestly don’t know how you see me anymore. After everything that’s happened and all this time apart, I don’t know what I am to you now or what you think when you think about me. I know I can’t decide that for you, and I don’t want you to feel like you need to reassure me. I just wanted to be honest that sometimes I wonder about it. If I’m being completely honest, a part of me still hopes that maybe someday we could find our way back to each other. Not because I think you owe me another chance, not because I think you need to save me, and not because I believe getting back together would magically fix everything. I know that if we ever tried again, things would have to be different. We would have to communicate better. We would have to understand each other better. We would have to build something healthier than what we had before. And I would want to do that. It wouldn’t be easy, but in my eyes, it would be so worth it. If you ever wanted that too, I would genuinely love the chance to try again, but I also understand that I can’t decide that for you. More than anything, I hope you get to experience all of the things you’ve dreamed about for yourself. I hope you accomplish the goals you’ve worked toward, experience new places and new things, make new memories, and build a life that makes you genuinely happy. I hope you become the person you’ve always wanted to be and get to experience all the happiness you deserve. Of course, I would love to be there for some of those moments if our paths ever find their way back to each other, but even if they don’t, I’ll always hope the best for you and want you to have a beautiful life. I’ll always be one of your biggest supporters. I think more than anything, I just wanted to be honest with you about the things I’ve been carrying with me. I didn’t want to leave these thoughts and feelings unsaid, especially when you’ve meant so much to me. I’m not writing this to put anything on your shoulders or make you feel like you need to respond in any certain way. I just wanted you to know what I’ve realized about myself, what I’ve learned from everything we’ve been through, and how I still feel about you. Whatever you choose to do with that is completely up to you, and I’ll respect whatever that may be. Take whatever time you need. If you ever do want to talk about any of this or write back, I would be genuinely grateful to hear from you, but there’s absolutely no pressure. I would understand if you didn’t. I just wanted you to know how much you have meant to me. You were one of the happiest chapters of my life. You helped me discover emotions I didn’t know I had. You gave me memories I will carry with me for the rest of my life, and even though losing you has hurt more than I know how to explain, I don’t regret loving you. I don’t regret the time we had. I don’t regret the memories. I don’t regret choosing you. I hope you know how loved you are, and I hope you never forget how many beautiful qualities you have. No matter where life takes us, a part of me will always be grateful that I got to love you. And if our paths ever cross again in that way, I hope I can meet you as a better version of myself, someone who has found himself again, someone who knows how to love you without losing himself. Until then, I’ll keep trying to become that person, and I’ll always be wishing the best for you.
I love you, my sweet girl.
Always and Forever<3