The Letters
NATE
Len,
He said I should write to someone that matters.
So here I am.
Writing to you.
I never realized how much you felt like home until I found myself in a place where everything is designed to be uncomfortable.
They strip away all your coping mechanisms here. All your defenses. All the ways you've learned to not feel things.
And underneath all of that?
I just keep finding you.
You in every memory that doesn't hurt.
You in every reason I have to keep showing up.
You in every version of a future I'm trying to believe in.
They tell us to write about what we miss. About what grounds us. About the things that remind us why we're fighting.
Every time I try, it's you.
It’s made me realise, all I want is to experience every part of life with you. The boring parts. The scary ones. The quiet ones where nothing happens except us existing together.
I never fully understood that saying "home is wherever I'm with you" until I found myself somewhere that doesn't feel like home because you're not there.
You are my home, Len.
And right now, I'm so fucking homesick I can barely breathe.
I'm getting better, though. Slowly.
Some days are harder than others. Some days I don't think I can do this. But then I remember the way you’d look at me—like there’s something worth saving there—and I find a way to keep going.
I hope you're okay.
I hope London is everything you dreamed.
I hope you're writing and thriving and building the life you deserve.
And selfishly?
I hope some small part of you is homesick for me too.
— Nate
Week 18:
Today the memories came hard and fast.
They keep telling us in here not to romanticize the past, that we need to let it go because it doesn't exist anymore. That there's only the present, only right now, and holding onto what was will keep us from moving forward.
But they don't tell you how to do that when the past contains the only person who ever made you feel like you deserved to exist in the first place.
How are you supposed to let that go?
I guess the reason I keep walking down memory lane is because I love running into you there. It's the one place I know I'll find you, even if it's just an echo.
I see you everywhere, Len.
In the way the sun hits the windows in the common room here. In the way the moon rises every night and all I can do is wonder if you're watching it too, wherever you are.
Do you remember all those nights we stayed up trying to figure out constellations? How we'd make up our own meanings when we couldn't remember the real ones? How you'd point at random clusters of stars and tell me stories about them like they were real?
I see you even in the color green. I can't look at it without thinking of your eyes.
You're woven into everything I am now.
Every good memory I have. Every moment that felt like actually living instead of just surviving another day.
You're there, braided into the fabric of who I've become, and I wouldn't unravel that even if I could. Even if it would make this easier.
They're trying to teach me about letting go here. About healing. About moving forward instead of staying stuck in patterns that don't serve me anymore.
And I get it. I understand the theory.
You're supposed to release the past so you can build a future. You're supposed to heal the wounds so they stop bleeding. You're supposed to move forward instead of constantly looking back.
But here's the problem: you're the only thing that's ever grounded me.
When everything else felt like it was spinning out of control, when I couldn't trust myself or the world or anything that felt remotely stable—you were solid. You were real. You were the one thing I could hold onto that didn't disappear when I blinked.
So how am I supposed to let that go? How am I supposed to move forward when the only direction that's ever made sense was toward you?
They ask me in group what I'm most afraid of losing.
And it's not the high, even though that would be the easy answer. It's not even the escape that drugs gave me when everything got too heavy.
It's you.
The memory of you. The possibility of you. The version of myself that existed when I was yours and that felt like the best version I've ever been. I don't know if holding onto that is healing or just a different kind of holding on.
Maybe it's both.
Maybe you can carry someone with you while still trying to let go of who you were when you needed them just to survive. Maybe loving someone doesn't have to mean drowning in them.
I'm trying to figure that out. Trying to find the line between remembering and living in the past. Between honoring what we had and using it as an excuse not to move forward.
But here's what I know for sure: I'd rather carry the weight of loving you than the weightlessness of forgetting.
I'd rather ache for you every single day than feel nothing at all. Because feeling nothing? That emptiness, that void where emotions should be?
That's what scared me into using in the first place.
And you?
You make me feel everything. The good, the bad, the complicated, the impossible.
You make me feel alive.
And I'd rather be in pain and alive than numb and just existing. Even if it means I have to figure out how to heal while still holding onto you. Even if it means I have to learn how to move forward while looking back.
Even if it means I might never fully let go.
— N
Week 22:
You know what I've been thinking about lately?
Those midnight drives we used to take.
Remember? Windows down, no destination, just driving until we ran out of gas or reasons to go home—whichever came first.
We'd be gone for hours, just listening to music. Not even talking half the time. Just letting songs say what we couldn't figure out how to.
You always had a song for everything.
For good days and shitty ones. For big moments and small ones. Especially the small ones.
It’s like you understood that sometimes a three-minute track can explain what an hour of conversation can't.
I've been trying to figure out what song this is—loving you from here. Missing you while trying to become someone who deserves you.
I haven't found it yet. Maybe it hasn't been written.
They talk a lot about discomfort here. About sitting in it instead of running from it or numbing it. About letting the hard stuff teach you something instead of just breaking you.
I think loving you has always been like that for me.
Not painful—that's not the right word.
Demanding but in the best way.
Like it asked me to show up as more than I was. To be braver, more honest, more present than I thought I was capable of being.
You never demanded it with words. You just existed as someone so fundamentally good that I couldn't stand the idea of being anything less than my best self around you.
And I don't regret a single second of it. Even now, even here. Even knowing I might lose you because of the choices I've made.
Because loving you made me believe I could be better. Made me want to fight for a future where I actually deserve to stand beside you instead of just watching you outgrow me.
I'll carry that with me no matter what happens next.
You taught me what it means to love someone enough to let them make you uncomfortable.
To let them see your worst and still choose to believe in your best.
To stay when leaving would be easier.
That's the song I'm learning right now.
The hard one.
The one that takes everything you've got.
The one that matters.
And every note sounds like your name.
— N
Week 47:
329 days.
That’s how long I’ve been sober for now since I last saw you.
My therapist asked me today how it feels to be this sober. To have gone this long without any kind of substance in my body—not just the hard stuff, but anything at all.
I told him it's the longest I've been completely clean since I was probably fifteen years old. Maybe younger. I can't even remember a time before I was putting something into my system to take the edge off or dull the noise or just make existing feel less heavy.
And the truth is, it feels strange.
Not bad. Just strange. Like I'm finally seeing the world without a filter I didn't even know was there.
He said something today that's had me thinking for hours.
That sometimes we don't want to heal because the pain is the last link to what we've lost. That holding onto the hurt feels like holding onto the person we can't have anymore.
I didn't say anything when he said it. Just nodded like I understood what he meant. But I've been sitting with it all day, and the truth is, I think I do understand.
The longer I stay sober, the clearer my head gets and I'm starting to see things I couldn't see before. Or maybe I saw them but couldn't let myself feel the full weight of them because I was too busy numbing everything else.
The impact you've had on my life since we were kids—it's becoming clearer every day. Every memory is sharper now. More vivid. Less like looking through fog and more like seeing in high definition for the first time.
I remember things I thought I'd forgotten.
Small moments that didn't seem important at the time but clearly were.
The way you looked at me when I played guitar for you the first time.
How you always knew when I was lying, even when I thought I was getting away with it.
The sound of your laugh—not the polite one you use for other people, but the real one that would catch you by surprise and make you cover your mouth like you were embarrassed by your own joy.
Three hundred and twenty-nine days sober, and I'm realizing that every good decision I've ever made, every moment I've chosen to show up instead of check out, every time I've been brave enough to try—you were there.
Not always physically. But there.
In the back of my mind, this quiet voice that sounded like you, asking me if this was really who I wanted to be. If this was really how the story was supposed to go.