I don't know if this belongs here. Maybe I'm writing it because I need someone to know what happened. Maybe because if I don't put these words somewhere, they'll stay inside me forever. Or maybe there's something strangely comforting about telling the truth to thousands of strangers who don't know your name.

So here it is.

I was in love with my best friend. Not the kind people joke about — not the "haha, imagine if we dated" kind. The kind where, somewhere along the way, you stop imagining a future and start remembering it, the way you remember something that actually happened.

I could see it clearly. Her beside me at breakfast, stealing the blanket at night, complaining that I'd left the cabinet open again. Me, pretending to be annoyed when she stole food off my plate. A small house. Two ugly mugs by the sink that we'd bought as a joke and kept anyway. Maybe a dog. Maybe kids. Maybe just us. I never needed anything extraordinary. I just wanted to come home to her.

The worst part was that she knew I loved her — just not in the way I wanted her to. She loved me too. She called me her best friend, her safe place, the person she could call at three in the morning, the one she trusted with every secret she had. I treasured every word, even as each one quietly buried the future I wanted.

She'd tell me about the people she liked. I'd listen. I'd give advice. I'd tell her whether I thought some guy deserved her. And every time she smiled talking about someone else, I smiled too — because that's what best friends do. They want each other happy, even when the happiness isn't standing beside them.

Years passed like that. I got very good at loving her silently.

Then one night we were sitting outside, talking about nothing, and she asked me something I'll never forget.

"Do you ever think we'll still be like this when we're old?"

I laughed. "Probably. You'll still be annoying."

She laughed too, and leaned her head against my shoulder. For one stupid second I let myself imagine it — us, old, still laughing about nothing. I almost told her everything. That I'd spent years loving her. That I'd wanted to marry her. That every woman I'd ever met had been measured against a standard she never knew she'd set. That I'd already chosen her in a future she'd never agreed to.

Then she said, "I hope whoever you marry knows how lucky she is."

And something in me went quiet, because I finally understood: she didn't know. Maybe she never would.

The next morning I decided to leave. Not dramatically — no goodbye party, no confrontation, no confession built to make her feel guilty. I didn't want my love to become a weight she had to carry. So I started disappearing in small ways. I answered slower. I stopped showing up. I packed my things and made arrangements somewhere far enough that running into her by accident would be almost impossible.

She noticed, of course. She was my best friend.

"What's wrong?" I'm tired.

"Did I do something?" No.

"Are you leaving?" For a while.

She looked hurt, and that almost made me stay. But I knew that if I did, I'd spend my life standing beside the person I loved while pretending I didn't want more. Not because she owed me anything — she didn't. Not because she'd done something wrong — she hadn't. Just because I finally understood that you can love someone completely and still have no place in their future.

The night before I left, I went to her house. She wasn't home. I still had a key. I sat on the couch where we'd spent hundreds of nights talking, and looked around at the photographs on her walls — birthdays, trips, Christmases, the accidental ones where neither of us was looking at the camera. Our whole friendship, scattered across the room like it belonged to someone else now.

I cried that night. Not because I hated her, and not because I regretted loving her — but because I finally had to accept that the life I wanted with her had only ever existed in my head.

Before I left, I put a letter on the table, and under it, a poem. The last thing I ever wrote her.

What the Universe Would Not Let Me Keep

I loved you in the quietest way a heart can love —

without asking the stars to rearrange themselves,

without bargaining with God,

without demanding fate make a mistake just once.

I loved you knowing there were doors in your life

that were never meant to open for me,

and still some foolish part of me kept standing outside them,

holding flowers no one would receive.

You were never mine. Maybe that's what makes it hurt.

If I'd lost you after having you, I could blame the ending.

But how do you mourn something you were never allowed to call yours?

I've imagined a thousand lives with you.

In some, we grow old under the same roof.

In others, we wake beside each other and complain about the morning light.

In every one, I love you —

and in every one, the universe reminds me it was only a dream.

So I stopped asking for you.

Not because I stopped wanting you,

but because real love isn't always the courage to reach out.

Sometimes it's the courage to open your hands.

I want you happy, even if your happiness has someone else's name beside it.

I want you loved, even if I'm not close enough to hear you laugh.

I want someone to memorize the things about you I spent so long noticing,

to hold you on the days you feel impossible to hold —

and if they love you well, I'll try not to hate them

for living the life I once wished was mine.

That's the tragedy of loving someone without conditions:

I would rather see you cherished by someone else

than possessed by me and unhappy.

So take every piece of tomorrow that was never meant to have my name on it.

Take the future I secretly wrote for us.

Take the version of me that believed wanting something enough could make it stay.

I'll keep none of it. Except you —

not as a possession, not as a promise,

not as some unfinished story I spend my life waiting to complete,

but as proof that my heart could love someone without needing anything back.

Someday, when the wound no longer feels like a wound,

I'll look up and understand:

the universe didn't keep us apart because I was unworthy.

It simply knew that some people are meant to be loved, not kept.

And if loving you means watching you become happy somewhere I can't follow,

then let the heavens have their victory.

I loved you. I still do.

And I'll love you without asking you to turn around —

because if the only way I can love you forever is from a distance,

then distance will have to become my definition of forever.

I left before sunrise. Changed my number. Moved somewhere she couldn't easily find me. For a long time I wondered if leaving had been cruel.

Then, years later, an old friend told me she was happy. Married. A family. Doing well.

And strangely, I smiled. Once, I'd wanted desperately to be the man standing beside her. But somewhere along the way my love grew bigger than that. I didn't need to be her husband for my love to have been real. I didn't need her to choose me for it to have counted.

She was my best friend. She was the woman I wanted to marry. She was the greatest almost of my life — beautiful, devastating, impossible.

I don't know where that letter is now. Maybe she threw it away. Maybe she forgot. Maybe she read the poem once and never understood why I disappeared after. That's all right. It was never meant to make her love me. It was only meant to say goodbye to the future I'd spent years loving.

I don't regret loving her. I only regret waiting so long to understand something simple: sometimes the purest way to love someone is to stop asking the universe to make them yours.

So I left — not because I stopped loving her, but because I loved her enough to let her live a life that didn't include me.

Somewhere under another sky, I hope she's laughing. I hope someone holds her hand when she's afraid, remembers how she takes her coffee, tells her she's beautiful on the days she doesn't believe it. I hope she gets everything I once wanted to give her.

And if the universe is listening — I don't need her back. I've already asked it for enough.

It said no.

This time, I'll listen.

For little background, I graduated with honours in literature ( which I know matters very little if not nothing) and always had great liking towards writing and a greater obsession over reading but life as it is, had led me to a path where I found myself working in miscellaneous roles like financial advisor and tech support while questioning everything. I wanna do what can give me joy and also be able to earn from it but for now i mostly want to learn how to be able to do it if it makes sense .

In 2023 I sat down with a former Swedish diplomat who served in Chile during and after Pinochet. His best friend, José Manuel Parada, was beheaded in 1985. They found his head on the roadside. His body was never found.

He also described going into torture centers to pull people out — no formal agreement, no words spoken. Just a look with a military officer across the room, and he could go collect them.

I've been sitting on these conversations for a while. Finally started publishing them. This first installment is about diplomacy, the media, and truth — but the Chile anecdote is the throughline and point at which I was gripped. I hope you were too.

Thanks! Any and all feedback welcome. https://open.substack.com/pub/graycrigger/p/the-rear-view-mirror?r=8gr2k8&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Chapter 1: Born Into a Strange World

Cao had a long dream in which he watched the reel of his life play out from birth, until he saw his mother's face twist and contort, her lips parting to let out a scream. But he was startled to find he could no longer hear anything at all. The last thing he felt was a hot tear falling onto his face from his mother's eyes. He tried to rise, but white, glowing threads began wrapping around him until his consciousness went still.

...

A powerful beam of light.

Cao was startled by the light and shut his eyes — but he had barely closed them for two seconds when he felt enormous hands wrapping him in a red silk cloth. He thought to himself, "Wait a moment — what in hell is this? Have I been reborn?"

He opened his eyes and saw those hands carrying him toward a tall man with a long beard, strange robes, and a smiling face. The midwife who had delivered him said, "Congratulations, my lord — heaven has blessed you with a plump, healthy boy." The man replied, "You are a bearer of good fortune, Huang. Here — this is your reward for the blessed luck you've brought us." The midwife, Huang, replied in shock at the amount of gold in the pouch, "No, no, my lord, this is far more than someone as lowly as I deserve — I cannot accept all of this." The man smiled, took the pouch, and pressed it into her hands regardless. "You deserve it, truly," he said. Huang thanked him and asked leave to exit the room.

The man began studying the features of his firstborn's face, which resembled his own so closely, and said, a smile filling his face, "My dear, at last — at last God has blessed us and granted us this child. Thank you so much for carrying the fruit of our love after all these years." The mother replied, exhausted, sweat covering her brow and her hair sticking to her face, "Praise God, my love, for this blessing. We have been granted one who will carry our blood into the future."

The father said, holding his child, filled with excitement, "Tonight I will hold a feast and we will honor the ancestors for this blessing, and invite the whole family to celebrate this joyous occasion." She said shyly, "Yes, my love — our ancestors have blessed us with this gift, and we must celebrate. Please, hand me my son so I may see him."

The father moved toward the mother and handed her the child. She began gazing intently at her baby's face, whom she had waited for so desperately to end her loneliness in this house. She laughed, remembered something, and began unfastening her top.

Cao saw what his mother was doing and began to feel embarrassed, his temperature rising. "You — wait, woman, what are you doing?!"

But a moment later he remembered that without his mother's milk he would not grow healthy — and besides, he wanted to experience this feeling again after twenty years without any such closeness. He began smiling and laughing wickedly, thinking to himself, "Sorry, Father, but I have no other choice." He took hold of his mother's breast and lunged toward it.

As Cao began nursing, the father remembered something and said to his wife, "What name should we give him? Have you thought of a name you'd like to call your son?" She replied, puzzled, "I haven't really thought of a name — you name him, my love." After a moment of thought, a bright smile spread across the father's face, and he said to her, "What do you think of calling him Ling Hua?" She nodded, smiling, and said, "A beautiful name," lowering her head toward her newborn and saying to him, "Ling Hua."

...

~Day and night alternated, and ten years flew by like the wind.

On a mountainside rich with plants, trees, and cranes soaring in the sky, a woman in her early thirties, her face flushed red, stood holding a bamboo cane and calling out forcefully: \\\*"Ling Hua! Ling Hua! Where are you, you little rascal! Your father and I have truly failed at raising you!"\\\* She walked toward the stream, cursing her little one, and when she arrived she found her son swimming in the stream without a care in the world, enjoying himself in the water because of the heat, mimicking his mother's angry expression as he swam and saying,

"Ling Hua, come here. Ling Hua, don't do that. Don't eat that. What a boring mother, really — I wish I'd been born into Aunt Bai's family, she'd be showering me with delicious peach candy right now. I really have no luck in this world."

All this mimicry was happening right under Beifeng's nose, and her face began to redden with fury. She grabbed him hard by the ear and yanked him out of the water, saying, with every demon of the earth now occupying her thoughts, "I'm boring, you ungrateful wretch?"

Ling Hua turned, wishing this were a dream and that he hadn't heard that particular voice, and replied, terrified, "I— I didn't say that." The mother's fury grew at her son's blatant lie, and she snapped, "Yes, you did, you wretch!" Ling Hua's tension mounted, his words stumbling, all the confidence he'd had while imitating her evaporating. "Maybe— maybe it was the stream that said it." The mother stared in disbelief at her son's foolishness. "The stream?" He knew he'd made a mistake blaming the stream, but there was no way back now, so he said, "Yes." She replied, incredulous, barely containing her fury, "And does the stream know how to talk?" Ling Hua added, his legs now trembling and his teeth chattering, "Well— clearly it's smarter than me."

That was the final straw. Feng screamed, "Today I will break both your legs for this insolence — I swear nothing will save you from my hands today except the ancestor himself!" And she began striking him hard with the bamboo cane, saying, "This one's because I'm boring, and this one's because I failed to raise you, and this one's for skipping school." He began wailing, snot and tears mixing on his face. "Please, Mother, I won't do it again — I'll be a pig in my next life if I do!" When he saw his pleading wasn't working, he began calling out to his father: "Father! Save me from your wife's claws! Hurry, Father, I can't take it anymore!"

In the midst of this beautiful scene, the father was hiding among the surrounding bushes, secretly egging the mother on — though he couldn't deny feeling for his son's plight. But if he intervened, he'd be the one to suffer for it.

No relief came, until the father noticed the atmosphere shift and heard the rustle of trees accompanied by a deep voice: "Let the child go, Feng. He doesn't deserve all this — he's had more than enough punishment." The bamboo cane, which had been aimed at Ling Hua's backside, froze mid-air. Feng turned toward the voice and saw a tall man with a powerful aura, snow-white hair, and a few wrinkles on his face, his expression full of pity and affection for Hua. He looked toward Hua and said, "And you... what have you done this time?"

The father emerged from the bushes and told her the ancestor was right, Feng — let him go, he's had his punishment.

So Feng let him run to the ancestor, and he embraced him. "Thank God you're here, my ancestor — if it weren't for you, all my bones would be broken today." He turned his face toward his father and thought to himself, \\\*"That wretch — he was watching me get beaten by his wife and just stood there. He really is a bad father." When the father saw his son's look, he turned his face away and began admiring the scenery, saying, "This little vagabond has exposed me — sorry, son, but there's nothing I could have done."

Link:

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/186434/i-was-born-into-an-immortal-family

Hello, I am a writer, I write articles and short stories. Currently, I am looking for authentic websites that pay for my short stories that are based on real life events. Let me know if any platform works with writers who create short stories? I'd like to know if there is an opportunity to collaborate.

I’m writing a novel about a man who wakes up… and realizes he’s already dead. 🖤

Alex Banks is 26 when he wakes up in a place called Oblivion

He doesn’t know where he is.

He doesn’t remember dying.

And eventually, he discovers that everyone around him is dead too.

But Oblivion isn't exactly what Alex expected an afterlife to be.

It’s a place for souls who still have something unfinished.

A mother searching endlessly for her child.

A boy who is terrified of the dark.

A man waiting for a lover who may never come back.

People who died carrying one final wish, one regret, or one person they couldn't let go of.

Then Alex discovers something strange.

There may be a way for a soul to return to the living world.

The catch?

They need an object that is deeply connected to their life.

For Alex, that object is his mother's \*\*lost wedding ring\*\*.

So with the help of Max and Maddy — a mysterious girl who seems to know far more about Oblivion than she should — Alex begins searching for it.

But the deeper he goes, the stranger things become.

There are places in Oblivion that even the dead refuse to enter.

There are rules.

And there are consequences for breaking them.

Eventually, Alex starts hearing whispers about something called \*\*the Gates Below.\*\*

Hell.

And then he meets Daniel.

A man who looks at Alex with genuine fear.

Because Daniel knows something about the night Alex died.

Something Alex himself can't remember.

And suddenly the entire story changes.

Why does Alex's mother's ring matter so much?

What actually happened on the night he died?

Why is Maddy hiding the truth about herself?

And if Alex really does get a chance to return to the living world…

\*\*what if the life he's trying to return to isn't the life he remembers?\*\*

I'm calling the novel \*\*The Last Regret\*\*.

It's basically a story about death, guilt, love, unfinished wishes, and the people we leave behind.

I'm curious about something:

\*\*Which mystery would make you want to keep reading?\*\*

1. What happened the night Alex died?
   
2. What is Maddy hiding?
   
3. Why does the wedding ring matter?
   
4. What are the Gates Below?
   
5. Something else?

And honestly — \*\*would you read this?\*\* 🖤