everything platonic ✓

chapter 8

Dear

To Rosie,

I don’t know where to start, or how to say the things I’ve kept hidden all this time. Writing this feels like letting go of something I’ve held onto for far too long, like tearing open an old wound just to see if it still bleeds.

I wish I could tell you that I was brave, that I’d found a way to say the things that mattered, to let you see all the hidden pieces of myself. But the truth is, I was always afraid. Afraid that my love was too much, that it would weigh you down, suffocate you, and leave me standing in the ruins of something I’d once held so close.

I wanted to be everything you needed, but in the end, I was only what I knew how to be—silent, afraid, a shadow clinging to the edges of your light. You were the one who knew how to let go, who could take memories and tuck them away without letting them haunt you. I envied you for that, but I could never follow. My love was a prison, and I was its captive, bound by the weight of words left unsaid.

If I could turn back time, I’d like to believe I’d be different—that I’d have the courage to tell you everything, to let you see all the broken, jagged pieces of me. But maybe it was always meant to be this way. Maybe some loves aren’t meant to be spoken, to be shared. Maybe they’re meant to be carried in silence, a quiet ache that never fades.

So this is my goodbye, I suppose. Not to you, because I know I’ll carry you with me forever, but to the dreams I had, the hopes that never saw the light of day. This is my farewell to the part of me that clung too tightly, that couldn’t let go, that mistook love for possession.

And in this quiet moment, as I sit here with only the echoes of the past to keep me company, I find a strange kind of peace. I don’t know if it’s forgiveness or acceptance, but maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe letting go is enough.

Maybe, in the end, that’s all I ever needed to do.

Yours, always in silence and in memory,
Narisa