********,
I still love you.
We were just kids when we found each other. 18 thinking love could outrun anything. We got together May 19th, and 10 days later I turned 19 with you beside me. Back then it felt like the world had finally stopped being so cold. You made life feel survivable. You made me feel seen. I still carry that with me. I still carry the guilt too.
When everything fell apart in November part of me broke in a way I haven't fully explained to anyone. I know there were moments where I failed you. Moments where I was disloyal, selfish, immature, careless with a heart that only ever tried to love me honestly. I know there were times I made you feel unsafe to speak, afraid to let your emotions breathe because you didn’t know how they’d land with me. looking back now, I can also see how much of my behavior came from my own insecurities.
There were times I tried to hold on to you too tightly. Times I let my fears, jealousy, and need for reassurance turn into control when you deserved freedom, trust, and space to simply be yourself. That was unfair to you.
You never belonged to me and I had no right to make love feel like pressure, restriction, or guilt. I think back on some of the ways I handled things and I hate the version of myself that made you feel like you had to shrink parts of yourself just to keep me comfortable. That’s something I carry a lot of shame for now, because you deserved a partner who trusted you fully instead of projecting his fears onto you. I should have protected your peace, not added weight to it. If I could go back, I would love you softer. Freer. More securely. The way you deserved from the beginning. That truth tears me apart more than I can put into words.
I am sorry for every bit of pain I caused you. Not the shallow kind of sorry people throw around to sleep better at night the kind that sits in your chest at 4am and won’t let you breathe right. The kind that replays conversations over and over, wishing you could step back into them and choose softer words, steadier hands, a better version of yourself.
I wish I had been better to you while I still had the chance. Even after everything, even after the distance and silence and damage, there is not a single hateful thing living inside me when it comes to you. You are forgiven for all of it. Every sharp edge. Every moment we hurt each other trying to survive ourselves. I forgive you because I understand now that pain makes people run, hide, explode, shut down. And I know I hurt too.
I hate feeling like that weird mf **** sending a letter 6 months later like some sad movie character, but there are certain kinds of love you don’t just set down and walk away from. Some people leave fingerprints on your soul that never really fade. You did that to me.
We’re knocking on 6 months apart and I still wake up every morning reaching for you before reality catches up. Sleep still feels wrong without you beside me. I take care of myself. I eat. I work. I keep moving. From the outside I probably even look okay. But there’s this slow, sharp burn in me that never really stops. Like some part of my soul still belongs to you and doesn’t know how to come home. Maybe that sounds pathetic. Maybe it sounds stupid.
I know I probably have no right to be sending this. I don’t expect a response from you either especially considering how silent I was when everything first ended. I know that silence hurt. I know there were moments where it may have felt like I just disappeared emotionally when things were at their heaviest. Truth is, I didn’t stay quiet because I stopped loving you. I stayed quiet because I genuinely believed space was what we needed. Everything between us was so raw, so painful, so emotionally loud that I didn’t think either of us could heal while still pulling at each other’s wounds. I thought if we kept trying to force conversations before we were ready, we would only leave deeper scars behind. So I chose distance, even though it killed me. Not because I didn’t care enough to fight for you, but because I cared enough to realize we were both drowning at the time. I thought maybe silence would give us room to breathe. Room to grow. Room to become people capable of carrying love without it collapsing under the weight of our pain. Maybe I was wrong for that. Maybe I handled it badly. But none of it came from lack of love. Not for a second. I don’t wish we stayed the same. We couldn’t have survived the way we were. We loved each other hard but we were drowning in ourselves too. I think about that a lot now. How love alone isn’t always enough when two people are hurting and young and scared.
I hope you’ve grown the way I’ve tried to grow. I hope life has been kinder to you lately. I hope your mind feels quieter. I hope your heart feels safer. I hope you laugh real laughs again. I hope you know you were deeply loved, even in all the moments where I failed to show it correctly.
Selfishly somewhere deep inside me I still hope there’s a version of time where we find each other again. Not as the people we were back then. Bleeding on each other and calling it love, but as people who finally learned how to carry themselves properly. People with steadier hands and healthier hearts. People ready to protect what we once had instead of accidentally destroying it. Because I still believe what we had was real. I think some loves only come once in a lifetime, and whether we ever speak again or not, you will always be one of the most important things that ever happened to me.
There will always be love from me.
Always.
— *****