So I joined this Free Writer’s Club recently because why not? 🤷🏻‍♀️ Hehe. And quite honestly, I have been in and out of writing highs & slumps lately, and I badly needed a push. Haha.

This month’s prompt is to Write to someone who can’t write you back.

Technical challenge:
Be concrete and specific. “Make things. Make things that might embarrass you. Make things that leave you feeling vulnerable, like you’ve left a vital part of yourself out on the line to dry. Make things with the kind of love you can’t ever take back.” 

So I have had this letter written for quite a time now this March, and I guess this prompt came at an opportune time, while I was taking this quiet period of my life to rest and regroup.

I admit that I may have written this at such a low point, do forgive me, but I really (really) did my best to make this fit for posting (disclaimer: so, uhm this may all just be fiction or not 😌) Haha. I hope you indulge me, just this one other time again. 🙂

March 30, 2021

Dear 🌻,

Hey, so how are you?

I’m filing this as letter number 51. Haha, kidding.😄
I don’t keep count of letters. I only keep count of the days.😌

So I’m writing this because I know you would not bother to write me back. Nah.

The same way you would only read all those things that I wrote to you before, because you told me you did not have a way with words like I did. Or that the things that I wrote were always too long.😬

But I liked that you indulged me, and read all of the things that I asked you to read, nonetheless (or did you really?), even if you did not enjoy reading that much, and even if they were all too long for your folly.🙂

And I had been meaning to tell you, I guess I’ll just leave it here for time to let it reach you— that my heart is in a better place now.😌

I think so. 

I think so, because I don’t cry at random times of the day, in random places that much now. 

No, not anymore. 

But only in the bus, every time the sun sets, and the sky turns into twilight, that’s always when those quiet tears catch up to me. So I reckon that’s really a sad time of the day, eh? You think?

But hey, I’m better, really.

Better than that time I thought I’d literally just stop breathing, any time. 

Not exaggerating.

You see, I had been so shaken by that confused daze you just left me to contend with. And it was impossible to make sense of everything that time, because I had trusted you wholeheartedly. 

Only to be blindly stunned, in the end, with little daggers of truths and non-truths stuck at my back. And I did not even know how to tell any of them apart, when I plucked them all out, all by myself, thereafter.

And oh I tried.

You don’t know how much I tried to fight for every next gasp of air because I wanted to live through that seeming death. 

And I had never felt so powerless in my life, like that.

I did not want people taking away things from me, I realized.
 
Things like having a say in my own life, and agreeing to arrangements because they were rational, and ultimately having a chance to get for myself the things that I knew I wanted, and I knew I could have had if I had been allowed to try. 

But I guess when you put yourself out there, you always run the risk of being swamped by people trying to take away things from you. However constantly selfless you naturally are.

You will always risk losing things. 
 
It takes twenty one days to make a habit, they say. And like scars, these habits— oh, how they stay.

“So you do count the days?” you asked me once. 
Well of course I do.

And it’s been 54 days since that night I was not able to sleep because I did not want to believe what you told me. I had actually felt it was coming, but I just could not believe it the minute I heard it.
 
Maybe because I did have faith in you, and believed you weren’t trash like everybody else. That you would tell me, and would not keep me like that when the whole pandemic situation did not make things work for us, because that was the least cruel thing to do.
 
That you would, at the very least, have had the heart to talk to me sincerely, and not have kept me in limbo, while you were busy coddling with, and cultivating another promising romantic relationship you had plans of keeping. 🥴 

That was the most painful part of it, I guess, the deceit. Coz I was a friend first, and I trusted you fully.
 
It has been 51 days since I took it upon myself to personally talk to you and find me my own peace. Because I was not sure if you were planning to give it to me any sooner, and that was the least that I deserved.
 
I had to thank you, though, that at least you did go see me, as agreed. It was a day I had a very hard time half making sense of, and half forgiving myself for whatever that was worth.

Fifty one days since I had hugged you so tight, looked you in the eye, held your hand while you were crying, and saying sorry for everything. 

Fifty one days since I had told you it was alright, and that I understood, and I did not want you to carry the guilt for a long time. 

That it was hard, and I wished it was different, but I understood, and I just wanted to hear it from you, even if you had struggled to look me in the eye that whole time.

I had been a very reasonable person to you, and I had only wished you had told me sooner because I would not have made it any harder for the both of us, had I known. Whatever reasons you had for keeping me that long, I wish they were good.

Fifty one days since I told you that I was going to be alright. F*ck it, I was going to try to be alright, even if every part of me that day shouted— liar.
 
Even if I did not know how, and where I was going to start again after that.

Even if I did not want you to let go of my hand.

It has been 36 days since you last spoke to me. I did not want to be the first to message, I did not want to beg. I did not want to mess up that already messed up life you had made for yourself.

It has been 36 days since you told me you hope I’d be happy, because you were. And I told you that I was glad you were happy. But I was actually crying on the other line while typing that because God knows I wish I was, but I was crumbling.

I’m writing to you, even if I know you’d never write me back.

Even if, after everything you’ve done, I still wish you would. Heck, some silly part of me still wishes you would.

I’m writing this too because I know this will be the last time that I will write like this— anguished, frail, scorned, betrayed, weak, full of grief for my godforsaken brokenness. Not asking for vindication, not even asking for a second chance. But only saying my piece, once and for all, for myself, and for whatever worldly penance I so deserve for my own sins.

I write to you, even if I know, you’d never write me back.

Because I know in my heart that I have already forgiven you, and everything that came and left with you. 

I just needed this. 

I can live with the truth, you know. 
I hope you can, too.

And I write this for me.

Damn, I write all of these for me,
-Z🌻

Stay faithful, my friends. 😌🌻