The Letters #2
The clearer I get, the more I understand how much of who I am—the good parts, the parts worth saving—came from knowing you. From wanting to be the kind of person who deserved to be loved by someone like you.
They keep telling me in group that healing isn't forgetting. That it's remembering without bleeding. Carrying the love without carrying the wound.
I want to believe that.
I want to believe that I can think about you without this constant ache in my chest. That I can remember the way you laughed without feeling like I'm drowning. That I can carry the best parts of us forward without being destroyed by the weight of everything we lost.
But right now?
Right now, the bleeding is how I know it was real.
The wound is proof that what we had mattered. That it changed me fundamentally. That it wasn't just another thing I fucked up and walked away from because I was too scared or too broken to fight for it.
The clearer my mind gets, the more I see how much I lost when I lost you. And the more I see that, the harder it is to imagine healing from it.
But I'm trying, Len. I'm trying so fucking hard.
Forty-seven weeks of trying to remember you without it destroying me.
Trying to hold you gently in my memory instead of clutching so tight I break us both all over again.
Trying to love you in a way that doesn't require you to save me.
That doesn't ask you to bleed with me just so I don't feel alone in this.
Some days are better than others.
Some days I can think about you and smile instead of shatter. Some days I can imagine a future where we find our way back to each other and it doesn't feel like a fantasy I'm using to survive the present.
Some days, the clarity feels like a gift instead of a curse.
And maybe that's enough for now.
Maybe that's what healing actually looks like when you're finally seeing clearly for the first time in your life.
Not forgetting. Not moving on. Not letting go.
Just learning to remember without bleeding out.
Just learning to carry the love without letting the wound define you.
Just learning to see clearly enough to know the difference.
— N
Week 65:
They talk about timing in group sessions.
About how you can't rush healing. Can't force readiness. Can't skip the hard parts just because they hurt.
All it does is make me think about us. About how we've always had such shitty timing.
How I needed you most when I was least capable of being what you needed. How you deserved stability when all I could offer was chaos. How every time we reached for each other, something pulled us apart.
But maybe timing isn't about finding the perfect moment.
Maybe it's about making any moment work by choosing to show up fully. By choosing courage over comfort.
Because the easy moments? Those don't teach you anything. Those don't test whether what you have is real or just convenient.
Those don't force you to decide if this person is worth fighting for or just worth having around when everything else is already good.
You and I? We've never had easy.
We've had beautiful and complicated and messy and profound. We've had the kind of love that demands everything and promises nothing except that you'll be changed by it.
And I'd choose that over easy every single time.
I don't know what the future looks like. Don't know if I'll ever be the kind of man who deserves to stand beside you. Don't know if we get another chance or if I've already used up all the chances I was ever going to get.
But I know this: I want to meet the future with you.
I want to face whatever comes next knowing you're there—not behind me, not ahead of me, but beside me.
Partners in whatever this life throws at us.
— N
The Final Letter:
It’s been two years and I don't know if you're reading these still or if you ever read them at all. But I've written them anyway.
Every single week.
Because even if you never see these words, I needed to say them. I needed to believe that somewhere, somehow, you could feel them.
But this is the last one.
Not because I've stopped loving you. Not because I've given up or moved on or decided you weren't worth it. But because I've said everything I know how to say.
Because at some point, love has to be more than words on a page that never get answered. At some point, I have to trust that I've done everything I can. That if you wanted to reach me, you would have.
That your silence is its own answer.
And I have to respect that. Even if it kills me.
So this is it.
The last time I'll put pen to paper with your name on the envelope.
The last time I'll sit here at 3 AM trying to find the words that will somehow bridge the distance between us.
But before I go—before I seal this one shut— I need you to know this…
I'd wait forever if I thought there was even a chance. But forever isn't fair to either of us.
So instead, I'm choosing to hope that wherever you are, whatever you're doing, you're happy. That you're building a life that scares you because it matters so much. That you're choosing joy over safety. That you're loved the way you deserve to be loved—completely, honestly, without reservation.
I love you, Len. I always have and I always will.
Not because you saved me, though in a thousand ways you did. Not because you made me want to be better, though that's true too. But because loving you is the most honest thing I've ever done. The truest version of myself I've ever been able to access.
When I love you, I'm not the addict or the abuse survivor or the broken kid who was more often lost than not.
I'm just Nate and you're just Nora.
And we're just two people who saw each other—really saw each other—and decided that was enough.
That's still enough for me. It will always be enough.
I'm sober and becoming someone who could stand beside you instead of in your shadow. And if someday you find yourself back in Eden—if someday you decide you want to know if I'm still here, if I'm still waiting, if there's still an us worth fighting for—
I'll be here.
And if you walk through that door, I'll be ready.
Not because I've been frozen in time hoping you'd come back. But because some part of me will always be ready for you.
Some part of me will always choose you.
In every version of this story. In every possible world where we exist.
I choose you, Len.
I chose you at seven, with scraped knees and no understanding of what it meant—only that it was always you.
I choose you now, knowing exactly what it costs.
And I’ll choose you at eighty-seven, if the universe is kind enough to bring us back to each other.
But loving you can’t mean losing myself and I know you’d never ask me to break just to keep you. So I have to choose to believe that I am enough—with or without you. The same way I need you to believe that about yourself.
That’s the only way this ever works.
So this isn’t goodbye, I won’t let it be. It’s just the part of our story where we have to walk away—not because we stopped choosing each other, but because we finally learned how to choose ourselves too.
Because if we’re meant to last—if this is as real as it feels—then it won’t disappear just because we let go for a while.
It will wait. It will grow. It will find us again. Somewhere down the line, in a version of us that isn’t held together by hurt or timing or almosts—we’ll meet again.
And maybe then we won’t have to fight so hard just to make it fit.
Until that day, I’ll carry you with me.
In every version of my life, in every future I can imagine—there’s still a part of me that’s yours.
I love you, Leni.
— Nate