with love, you

Letter One

I found you in a cardboard box that smelled faintly of dust and vanilla body spray.

You’d taped the lid shut like you were sealing something holy. Or dangerous. The tape had yellowed at the edges, brittle now. I had to prise it open with a butter knife because I couldn’t find scissors. That felt symbolic, in an irritating way.

Inside were the glitter-covered notebooks you insisted were ironic, the pink gel pen with the chewed cap, and the folded sheet of paper labelled, in thick black marker:

OPEN WHEN YOU’RE 25.

You never specified a grace period. I’m two years late. I hope you’ll allow it.

The letter inside was three pages long. You’d underlined entire sentences, as if emphasis could future-proof you. There were bullet points. There were vows. There was a drawing of a crown in the corner.

I will never stay where I am not adored.

I will never beg.

I will leave this town before it makes me small.

You pressed so hard the ink bled through to the next page. The paper looks wounded.

You would hate the fact that I’m writing this from the same bedroom.

The walls are no longer pink. Mum repainted them magnolia after you left. She said she wanted something “calmer.” The wardrobe door still sticks. The window still rattles when buses pass. There is a faint mark on the skirting board from where you kicked it the night you turned sixteen and swore you’d be gone before you were twenty.

You were very certain about twenty.

I suppose I should start with the most obvious betrayal.

I stayed.

Excerpt from Your Journal, 14th May

I am not like the women here. I will not fold myself into kitchens and corners. I will not apologise for being loud or ambitious or “too much.” If someone does not love me loudly, they do not get me at all.

I will not be someone who waits.

Letter Two

You’d be proud of the way we left the first time.

The departure was cinematic. Suitcase wheels on gravel. Mum crying quietly, trying not to make it about herself. You pretending you weren’t scared. You said, “It’s only a train ride,” as though distance was something you could compress.

The city was everything you said it would be. Loud. Electric. Possibility humming through it like current.

We lived in a flat that smelled of other people’s dinners. The windows faced a brick wall. We told ourselves that was charming. We bought second-hand plates and insisted we liked the mismatched look.

You worked three jobs. You called it building character. You didn’t call it exhaustion.

You fell in love exactly the way you swore you wouldn’t — quickly, ferociously, without backup plans.

You said, “He sees me,” after the third date.

And for a while, he did.

You would ask if he adored us.

The answer is complicated.

In the beginning, yes. In the beginning, he looked at you like you were a thesis he wanted to read carefully. He liked that you had opinions. He liked that you argued back.

Then, gradually, the admiration turned quieter. Softer. Conditional.

“You don’t have to be so intense,” he said once, smiling as though it was affectionate.

You laughed. You took it as flirtation.

It wasn’t.

Loose Page Found in the Back of a Notebook

When I fall in love, it will feel like expansion. Not like shrinking. Not like I have to edit myself mid-sentence.

If I ever hear myself say sorry for crying, I’ve gone too far.

Letter Three

I need to tell you something before you find out another way.

We did beg.

Not on our knees. Not dramatically. There was no scene. No weeping in doorways.

It was smaller than that. It looked like staying quiet when he said, “You’re overreacting.” It looked like rehearsing conversations in the shower so you wouldn’t sound “crazy.” It looked like swallowing the urge to say, “That hurt,” because you could already hear the sigh on the other end.

You thought begging would be obvious. Ugly. Something you could catch yourself doing.

It isn’t.

It’s asking, lightly, “Are you sure you’re okay?” when you mean, “Do you still love me?”

It’s pretending you don’t mind when plans are cancelled again.

It’s shrinking your sentences to make room for his.

The first time he didn’t come home until three in the morning without answering his phone, you told yourself you were modern. You told yourself jealousy was primitive.

You didn’t sleep.

The second time, you didn’t call.

By the third, you’d learned not to ask.

You once wrote that love would feel like expansion. Sometimes it did. Sometimes it felt like standing in a room where the ceiling lowered by an inch every day. Slowly enough that you didn’t notice until you had to tilt your head.

You would want to know why we didn’t leave.

We tried.

Once. We packed a bag. We cried in the bathroom where the fan buzzed too loudly. We left a note that said, “I can’t do this anymore.”

He called before we’d reached the end of the street.

He cried.

You never factored his tears into your vows.

Neither did I.

Journal Entry, Undated

If someone ever makes me feel small, I will walk. I would rather be alone forever than half-loved.

Alone forever is better than teaching someone how to treat you.

Letter Four

Alone forever is less romantic than you imagine.

It is Sunday afternoons with the radiator clanking and no one to send a message to about it. It is cooking for one and pretending you prefer it that way. It is watching everyone else pair off and insisting you are fine, because you chose this.

After him, we were alone. Properly.

We left for good one November morning. No note this time. No fanfare.

We blocked his number on the train.

You would think that would feel victorious. It felt hollow. Necessary, but hollow. Like amputating something that had been infected.

We learned something then, something I wish you knew: Leaving late is still leaving.

It does not cancel out the staying.

You will be furious with me for how long it took. You will call me weak. You will underline weak twice.

But you have never tried to disentangle yourself from a person who knows exactly which version of you to praise and which to dismiss. You do not yet know how persuasive loneliness can be.

You think strength is a permanent trait. It isn’t. It is a practice. And sometimes we forget to practice.

Fragment from the Back of the “OPEN WHEN YOU’RE 25” Letter

I will have a career I’m proud of. I will not settle for “almost.” I will not move back home unless it is to visit.

If I ever come back for good, it means I’ve failed.

Letter Five

I need you to listen carefully now.

Coming back was not failure.

It was debt. It was rent that doubled in one year. It was a job that dissolved in an email with the subject line “Restructure.” It was the quiet humiliation of calculating your bank balance three times to make sure you hadn’t misread it.

We did not stride back into town dramatically. We came with two suitcases and a careful story about “taking some time.”

Mum did not say I told you so. She made the bed with the magnolia walls and left a glass of water on the bedside table like I was still sixteen.

I lay here the first night staring at the ceiling, listening to the buses, and felt something crack inside me.

You said you would leave before the town made you small. It turns out towns don’t do that on their own.

Sometimes smallness is just exhaustion.

But here is what you don’t know yet: Coming back gave us air.

It gave us space to stop performing success.

It gave us quiet.

We found freelance work. Not glamorous. Not a crown in the corner of the page. But ours.

We started writing again. Not for validation. Not to be impressive. Just because we missed it. You thought ambition would save you from everything.

It can’t. But it can anchor you.

Journal Entry, Age 16

I don’t want to become someone who compromises just to be loved. I don’t want to end up like Mum, who makes everything “fine.”

I want to be chosen loudly.

Letter Six

You are unkind about Mum.

You read her softness as surrender.

You don’t see how strong it is to remain gentle in a place that doesn’t reward gentleness.

I judged her too, for a long time. I thought I was different. Harder. Immune.

But we did make everything fine, didn’t we? We smoothed. We translated. We apologised for other people’s sharpness.

You wanted to be chosen loudly.

Here is the truth: very few people know how to love loudly. Most love in half-tones. In habits. In showing up with tea when you’re ill. In checking the tyres on your car before a long drive.

We met someone else.

I hesitated to tell you because I know how you react to anything less than fireworks.

He is not dramatic. He does not make grand speeches. He listens.

The first time I cried in front of him, I started to apologise. The word was already formed.

He said, “You don’t have to.”

It was a small sentence. It rearranged something in me.

I am not smaller with him.

I am quieter, perhaps. But not diminished.

You need to understand the difference.

Loose Page Torn from the Back

If I ever have to ask someone to love me properly, I won’t stay.

I don’t want to grow into someone who tolerates crumbs.

Letter Seven

You were right about crumbs. You were wrong about what they look like.

They aren’t always obvious. They aren’t always cold.

Sometimes crumbs look like almost enough. Like just shy of what you need.

We tolerated almost for too long because it felt better than nothing.

Now, when something feels “almost,” I pay attention.

That is your gift to me. Your absolutism. Your refusal to romanticise mediocrity.

You thought your intensity would ruin you.

It didn’t.

It guided you.

The difference now is that I use it for discernment, not destruction.

Final Page of the Original Letter

If you are reading this and you have become small, please forgive yourself quickly and then undo it.

Do not stay small out of shame.

Do not punish yourself for what you did not know at sixteen.

Letter Eight

You ended your letter with an instruction.

I have read that line ten times tonight.

Please forgive yourself quickly and then undo it.

I think this is where we misunderstood each other.

I did not become small in a permanent way. I bent.

I bent to survive a love that did not know how to hold me. I bent under financial fear. I bent under the weight of wanting to prove something.

But bending is not the same as breaking.

And smallness is not always a moral failure. Sometimes it is a season.

You wanted a life that glowed. You thought survival would look triumphant. All sharp edges and certainty.

It doesn’t.

Sometimes it looks like coming home.

Sometimes it looks like leaving late.

Sometimes it looks like admitting you were wrong about someone.

And sometimes it looks like sitting on the bedroom floor at twenty-seven with glitter on your fingers from a notebook you once thought was sacred, realising you did not betray yourself.

You just grew. You did not leave this town before it made you small.

You left. You returned. You left again in other ways. You changed the shape of what this town means to you. You did beg, briefly.

And then you stopped.

You were not adored by everyone you loved. But you learned that adoration is not the only metric of worth.

You promised you wouldn’t become someone who waits.

You were right. In the end, you didn’t.

You stopped waiting for someone else to expand your life.

You built it quietly. Not perfectly. But honestly.

If you could see me now, I don’t think you’d be angry.

I think you’d ask questions. You’d tilt your head the way you do when you’re trying to understand something complicated.

You would want to know if we are happy.

The answer is: we are steadier now, less afraid of being alone, and we no longer apologise for crying or memorise the cracks in ceilings to avoid looking at someone; we leave rooms that shrink us, and we come back when we need to.

You wrote that you would rather be alone forever than half-loved.

You were right.

It just took us time to define what half-loved felt like.

Thank you for being so certain.

Thank you for underlining everything.

Thank you for believing that we deserved something expansive.

We still do.

I’m not writing to tell you that we achieved every vow. I’m writing to tell you that the vows mattered. They were not contracts. They were compass points - even when we wandered, we circled back.

I am folding your letter again now, three creases, the paper softer at the edges.

I am not putting it back in the box.

I am keeping it on the desk.

Not as evidence of failure.

As proof that we always knew what we needed.

With love,

You.