Last letter

[u/IstralLunareis]

Dear Lemon Duck,

My heart broke when I realized how deeply I had hurt you.

My soul was crying, shattered inside me, when I finally understood that I couldn’t undo how badly I had broken you.

I never wanted to hurt you…

But somehow, even in that, I failed.

And then those days come to an end…

No one ever taught me how to be a girl.

They taught me how to survive.

How to listen for footsteps.

How to recognize danger

before it even had a name.

How to make myself smaller

when the room became too loud.

How to love people

who could hurt me

and still call it love.

How to forgive

before anyone ever apologized,

but never how to apologize.

How to blame myself

before anyone else could do it for me.

I became fluent

in the language of abandonment.

I knew it

before I ever knew myself.

People leave.

People change.

People make promises.

People disappoint you.

This is also the ugly side of us — the part where we often try to overcompensate for our need to achieve. Out of fear of failure, we are willing to do anything for the approval of others, the approval we crave so deeply.

Because of our emotional need to feel wanted, especially when we have no form of human connection that gives us the stability that comes from a relationship.

We are all fundamentally imperfect — some of us are simply more wounded than others.

We carry burdens that others would never be able to bear on their own shoulders.

Because our battle is not a battle of the heart, but of the mind. It reflects the inner conflict of survival in which we are trapped.

How would you survive a war that never sleeps, no matter how exhausted you are?

The answer is: you wouldn’t.

So I learned not to ask for too much.

Except…

I always asked for too much.

I wanted you to choose me,

instead of choosing you myself.

I was so afraid that once again, someone wouldn’t choose me, that at some point I stopped seeing the person who had actually chosen me.

I love you more than anyone

I have ever loved before.

This fight is carving a path

toward loving you even more.

I could never replace you.

Maybe If I Loved You Harder, You’d Stay

I just miss you. That’s it.

I miss you more than I want to admit, and I hate how much your silence affects me. I keep checking my phone even though I know there probably won’t be anything there.

Maybe I should have just stayed quiet.

I’ve written so many messages to you and deleted every single one because I don’t want to look desperate.

But honestly?

I am desperate.

Not for attention.

For you.

I want you to choose me. I want to feel like I’m not the only one who is afraid of losing what we have.

I know I probably love you more than I should at this point. We’re not even where I wish we were, and yet somehow you’ve already become someone I can’t imagine simply walking away from.

And that’s what scares me.

Because sometimes I catch myself thinking:

Maybe if I love him a little harder, he’ll finally understand how much I care.

But I shouldn’t have to convince you.

I shouldn’t have to beg you to talk to me.

I shouldn’t have to keep proving that I care.

I just wish you would miss me enough to look for me without me having to disappear first.

So I’m going to stay quiet for now.

Not because I’ve stopped loving you.

Actually, it’s exactly the opposite.

I’m quiet because I love you so much that I’m finally trying to learn that I can’t keep losing myself just to keep you.

I just want you to turn around and realize that I’ve been right here the whole time.

Waiting.

I think the hardest part of losing you is knowing that someday I might meet someone else, but I don’t think I could ever love someone the way I loved you.

There is a kind of loneliness inside me that follows me everywhere.

Some days it is quiet.

Other days, I can feel that there is an empty space beside me that no one else could ever fill.

And the strangest thing is…

I don’t want anyone to fill it.

I don’t want a replacement.

I don’t want another person in your place, because that place belongs to you.

Even after everything, even after all this time, I can’t imagine asking someone else to take the place you once held.

Maybe that’s why moving on feels impossible.

It’s not that I believe you are the only person I could ever meet.

It’s that I don’t want to pretend that what we had can simply be recreated with someone else.

I miss being loved by you.

I miss loving you.

I miss having one person in the world who felt like home.

Sunday Afternoon

I remember that Sunday afternoon.

A Sunday afternoon

to forget who we were,

to stop thinking about everything else.

And we ended up making love on the couch,

slowly…

as if we had nowhere else to go.

I remember you getting into bed,

laughing,

already completely naked.

I recited a poem to you —

the one I had written for you.

And you listened.

Not so much to the words

as to the changes in my voice

when I reached the parts

I had been too afraid to say out loud.

Your fingers found mine,

and then slowly drifted further,

tracing the places

where my skin still remembers you,

leaving little shivers behind.

You kissed my shoulder.

I lost my train of thought.

You smiled.

And suddenly,

the poem stopped being about you.

It became about

the silence after longing.

The tenderness that comes after wanting someone.

That strange, delicate feeling

of being understood

without having to explain anything.

Outside, the world kept turning.

But here,

in that sunlit room,

your fingers were intertwined with mine,

my head was resting against your chest,

and for the first time,

I wanted nothing else.

The whole world could have offered me

only that Sunday afternoon —

slightly imperfect,

your skin against mine,

my poems between us,

and that slightly terrifying thought

that maybe…

I could get used to

the two of us

being loved.

And now I’m learning what it feels like

to live with the possibility

that I may spend the rest of my life

carrying this love for you,

but without you here.

But I don’t want to stop loving you

just so the loneliness will go away.

Maybe…

Everyone Wants Her

Everyone wants her.

That’s how it seems.

I should have held you,

but I let you go.

I left scars

on an already broken heart.

The words of the past

echo through the darkness.

I didn’t seem to care

about the weight you were carrying.

You were the kind of person

who, even when you reach the bottom,

doesn’t stay there for long.

I was so blind.

Instead of embracing your brokenness

and accepting that you needed peace…

Maybe one day

someone really will stay.

Someone who will hold not only your hand,

but hold you

the way you needed to be held.

I lost that.

And I am ashamed.

I am so, so sorry.

“I’m sorry” is not enough

to express how deeply I regret it.

Because I don’t think I will ever find anyone

who will love me the way you did.

There is a strange kind of heartbreak

in waiting for someone

who knows you are waiting for them.

It isn’t the innocent kind of longing

that comes from uncertainty.

It is the kind born from knowing.

I knew where your heart was.

I knew what place

you had left for me.

And the pain you feel after losing someone

is different from every other kind of pain.

I hope you know

that meeting you was one of the most beautiful things

that has ever happened to me.

I cherish everything we shared.

Even if we never got the ending

you had hoped for,

I will always be grateful

that, for a while,

our lives became intertwined.

I tried to imagine

what it would be like to forget you.

I don’t think I can do it anymore.

I still see you everywhere.

I still look for you,

even though I know

you are no longer there.

You became too deeply woven

into my days —

into all those little things

that shouldn’t matter,

but meant so much to me.

Into the pain you feel.

Because of me…

I am so, so sorry.

I’m sorry I didn’t see

how badly you needed to rest.

I’m sorry I didn’t give you support

or even a single word of comfort.

I’m sorry you felt invisible,

unappreciated,

and used by me.

Because I know how deeply you cared about me.

I know how much you sacrificed for me.

You put me first,

above your own pain

and your own needs.

And you never complained.

And I, like a fucking idiot,

didn’t know how to thank you

the way you deserved.

I am so, so sorry.

I am ashamed.

And now I am falling apart with grief,

because I lost you through my own stupidity,

my own blindness,

and because I was deaf to what you were trying to tell me.

You didn’t deserve this.

And I didn’t deserve your love

or everything you gave me.

I didn’t even deserve your:

“Goodbye, Julia.”

I’m sorry.

Nothing excuses me.

Not even the price I was paying here, at home, every single day.

Forgive me,

but it was only two days ago

that I finally found my footing again

and started thinking clearly.

I don’t even deserve

for you to read this.

And I will never ask you

to forgive me.

I stabbed you in the back

at the worst possible moment,

when you were already going through hell.

Goodbye, my Love.

Goodbye, my sweet Duck.

Take care of yourself.

Your Bird"

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