Hey Dear.

The impact of what you have become is not worthy of the word impact itself. There should be another word—one heavier, quieter, more honest—but I don’t have it yet.

I keep trying to brace myself, to set my feet on the race ahead, but every time I do, it ends in ruins. Some days, I still hope all of this is a random dream, that I’ll wake up and find you where you’re supposed to be. Maybe that’s why I keep looking for you in strangers—faces that never met you, people who never knew you, yet I expect you in them anyway. Greedy, right? What you made me do.

I see things and instinctively know how you would have reacted. I turn to my left to share it, and the person beside me doesn’t understand why I’m staring so hard, why my chest tightens at something so small. They don’t know I was looking for you. I’ve met people since then. I may have even learned to love a few—but only because they carried fragments of you. Your height. Your interests. A familiar tone. I held onto them just long enough to pretend I wasn’t really reaching for you. Even when I finally saw you—if only for a glimpse—I realized that’s all I’d been collecting: glimpses.

They do everything right. Everything good. Yet it feels wrong. Unsafe. Like going into battle with a sword and no armor. I know what you would say—that armor doesn’t guarantee safety. And you’d be right. But at least it promises a little more time. A little more chance to survive.

I want to be held and feel warmth, not cold. I want a hug that brings peace, not a heart pounding so loud it feels like a warning drum. With you, my body knew how to rest.

I’ve always felt like I never truly belonged anywhere—just a scene in a movie, never the main character. But with you, I knew who I was. I wasn’t just a character; I was the writer. And we were like a small YouTube movie with only two actors—you and me. We were all we needed. We weren’t chapters to be flipped and forgotten; we were the whole plot of each other’s stories.

Now, everyone else either holds too tight until I can’t breathe or too loose to feel anything at all. Something is always missing. But you—You held me with precision. Not too tight to feel trapped. Not too loose to feel abandoned. You knew the exact measure. The perfect spice.

I want to unclench. I want to fall into arms that feel like yours again.

Maybe it’s my insecurity—the fear of wanting love but being too afraid to open myself to it. Maybe it’s the terror of loving once, fully, and then watching it slip away. Of feeling my heart almost fall into my hands because I never really understood why it all happened. And now I’m scared that whatever I have become will be the fate of anyone I let close again.

Since what you have become, giving up feels easier. Flipping to the next chapter feels safer.

I’m scared that the dreams I still dare to dream are an injustice to your spirit. Scared that moving forward means leaving you behind.

Since you died, I’ve been stuck between a rock and a hard place—between honoring what we were and surviving what I am now.

If you can see this, I hope you know this;We both died that day, but only you stopped breathing.

Always,

Me🥀🥀🥀🥀