My darling Harry,
This should be the second letter, hopefully I've put them in the right order. It's only been a week since the last letter, 2 weeks since everything went to shit. The doctors said that it was what they call grade IV. The final stage of what is known as the worst brain tumour. That should have given me a clue that things really aren't looking good but I was ignorant enough to think that I'd have a few months of normality, a few months to make the most of the time I have left. Well as it turns out I was wrong.
I can feel it. Feel it spreading. Feel myself losing. Maybe it's just my mind making me feel worse than I am, but I feel like I want to just curl into a ball and cry. I feel like I'm losing control over my own body. Last night, while you were in the shower, I was so desperate for you to just hold me that I almost told you everything. I wish I had. I ended up pretending to be asleep just so I didn't accidentally let it all out. Another lie. I didn't sleep at all that night.
I need you to know that there's nothing I want more than to give you the world, to give you everything you could possibly want. The perfect wedding we always talk about. The football team of little kids, our kids, running around the house, getting dirt all over your stupidly expensive carpet. That's what hurts me the most. It hurts to know that I will never be the one to give you that. I really hope that some day you'll still get all the things you've dreamed of, just not with me.
The doctor said that I have a few months before the symptoms will really start. He said that in a typical case I would have about a year but with the way that it's spread, he doesn't expect me to make it to Christmas. How shit is that. I know that you probably would have told me to get any treatment I was offered just to get a few more months together, that you'd put me on a diet of nothing but green smoothies because you always have been the hopeful one of us. But there's nothing really that they could do. There's no miraculous cure. There's no hope for me.
I'm already forgetting things, little things, but when it gets bad I probably won't remember your face and that's something that I never want you to go through. It will get to a point where I can't talk, can't move. Can't breathe. I won't be the man that you fell in love with. I don't want that to be the way that you remember me. I don't want your last memory to be me lying weak and frail, having to be spoon fed like a child. I want you to remember me as me. Even if I'm an asshole.
They offered me radiotherapy. They offered to try and operate. I said no. It would keep me alive, maybe for a few more months, but with the side effects I would hardly be any better off. I want to spend my last few months with you next to me as my soulmate, my love, my partner, not as my carer. That's why I'm not going to let myself hurt you. Not any more than I already am. I know that you would put on a brave face, and that you would happily wipe my ass if it came to it, but you don't deserve that. You don't deserve to have that weight put on your shoulders only for me to leave you at the end of it.
What I'm going to do, and what I already have done if you are reading this, is stupid and selfish and you might hate me for it, but at least you won't have to see me fade away from you. I was only trying to protect you.
I love you,
Louis
