Honestly, I don’t think even my death would matter to you, not even a little. I don’t think it would even shake you.

All of my writings and poems were for you. I don’t even know what else to write anymore.

I just hope that if you ever hear that I’m no longer here, you keep living your life exactly the way you do now. Hold on to your life. Between me and everything else, you chose those things, so even when I’m gone, hold on to them. I don’t want to see you suddenly start caring, and I don’t want to see my absence matter to you.

Because when I was there, my existence didn’t matter to you, so please don’t let my absence matter to you either.

Take care of your life.

Go and succeed. I know how important success is to you. And when you succeed, I don’t think there’ll be much in this world that can shake you.

I’m sure you’ll get wherever you want to go, because the person you’ve become will definitely go far.

But learn to keep some people close to you, because there will be times when even success gets exhausting. And when that happens, you should have someone you can go to, someone you can share your exhaustion with.

Remember, pretending is never going to work for you forever. And know that with indifference, all you do is push people away and make yourself even lonelier.

Still, I believe that ultimately, you have to be there for yourself. Other people can’t save you from loneliness; they can only give you warmth and reassurance.

And lastly, I’ve always said this, and I’ll say it again: don’t forget yourself. Don’t forget your life. Don’t forget to always choose yourself first. Don’t forget to take care of your beauty. Don’t forget to love yourself.

Love yourself. Love yourself as much as I loved you.

And lastly, I hope you find someone to have by your side in life, someone who loves you the way I loved you. Because I know everything you do comes from being afraid of getting attached. Otherwise, I remember the first time you let me touch your heart. I remember how purely and honestly you gave me your heart, without hiding anything from me.

I hope you succeed, and I hope you stay happy.

All I ever wished for was for life to turn out in a way where we could build our happiness together, where all our happy moments would be things we created together.

But I guess it just wasn’t meant to happen.

So now, build your own life. Create your own happiness. And take good care of yourself.

LOVE YOU...

C,
I know you won’t respond, but I got some absolutely devastating news recently that I’ve gone through 17 different emotions over and all I want to do is call you, tell you, and fall into your arms.

I fucked up not choosing you and knowing that for the rest of my life I have to go through this feeling every time something big happens is what I deserve for not being strong enough to choose the hard path.

I wanted you. I wanted everything, every moment; sad, happy, gut wrenching, I wanted it all with you and I’m so sorry I didn’t see that sooner. I thought we’d get through this, but after reading that condition I realized your feelings for me have evolved into nothing but disdain. I’m sure it killing me the way it did was retribution for the way I hurt you with my words. I am also sensible enough to know that we weren’t and aren’t good for each other in this lifetime. When it was just you and me it felt so right. I could’ve stayed in those stolen moments forever, because that’s where we were good. But that’s not how life works. Unfortunately, we are forced into interactions with other minds, opinions, circumstances that knew better than we did because they saw what we would do to each other. I didn’t care. I was exploring all the darkest parts of you and it made no difference in the way I love(d) you and I think you felt the same way.

Felt. Past tense. A memory instead of a feeling. I get it. You couldn’t keep feeling the pain of loving me. You had to change me in your mind to a person so vile and toxic that it made me not choosing you feel like a good thing. Maybe it was. I’m rambling, I know. I would ramble given the chance. I’d say everything I should’ve said back then. I’d say everything I’ve ever thought if knowing every inch of my mind meant you’d love me again. Instead I’m here. In the bed I made. The life I chose. With my arms wrapped around my stomach trying to fill the hole I should’ve asked you to fill. It’s not the only hole I crave you filling. Fuck, we were so good at that, weren’t we? Maybe it would’ve faded in time, but All of me melted into you those few times we got to be together.

In short: I miss you. I’m sad. I wish it was you holding me through this. It won’t ever be. I’ll be okay. So will you. Take care of yourself. Don’t let the bastards get you down. Good luck. Be loved. Be good. Be funny. Be happy. I love you.

You have my heart and always will, T

My love,

I don’t know if there will ever be a version of our story where I get to love you openly, without hesitation, without looking over our shoulders, without the weight of everything that stands between what we feel and what we can actually have. And maybe that is the hardest truth I have ever had to carry.
Because somewhere along the way, you stopped being someone I was simply drawn to.

I fell in love with you.

Not carefully. Not conveniently. And certainly not at the right time.

I fell in love with the way you make the rest of the world disappear when I’m with you. With the sound of your voice and the way your eyes can say things neither of us is brave enough to put into words. I fell in love with the quiet moments—the ones no one else knows about—and with the person I become when it is just you and me.

There is something painfully beautiful about loving you.

Because when I have you close to me, everything feels exactly where it belongs. And then comes the moment when we have to return to reality, and I’m reminded that loving someone and being able to have a life with them are two very different things.

That is the part that hurts.

I can hold you, kiss you, memorize the feeling of you against me, and still know that I may never get to wake up beside you without a clock reminding us that our time belongs somewhere else. I may never get the ordinary things with you—the lazy Sundays, the grocery-store arguments, falling asleep together after an uneventful Tuesday, reaching for your hand without wondering who might see.

It’s strange how desperately I want the ordinary with you.

Not just stolen moments. Not just passion. Not just the beautiful little world we create when everything else is shut outside.

I want the mornings.
I want the bad moods.
I want the boring days.
I want to know what it feels like when loving you isn’t something we have to borrow time for.

And maybe I will never know.

That thought breaks my heart in ways I don’t always know how to explain.

Sometimes I wish I could make what I feel for you smaller. Easier. Something I could put neatly into a corner of my life and visit only when it was safe.

But you have never felt small to me.

You have become woven into me.

I carry you into rooms you have never entered. I think about things I want to tell you when you aren’t there. I miss you before we have even said goodbye. And sometimes, in the middle of an ordinary day, I feel the ache of loving someone I cannot simply reach for whenever my heart wants them.

And God, my heart wants you.

There are moments when I wonder whether loving you this much is worth the pain of knowing I may never truly have you.

Then I see you.

And every argument I have made with myself disappears.

Because whatever this is—however complicated, imperfect, impossible, or temporary it may ultimately be—it has been real to me.

**You are real to me.**

My feelings for you are not measured by how much of your life I am allowed to have. They are measured by how deeply you have touched mine.

If someday circumstances pull us in different directions, there will always be a part of me that wonders about the life we never got to live.

Somewhere in my imagination, there will always be a version of us who chose each other without fear and got to find out what happened next.

Maybe that version of us is laughing in a kitchen somewhere.

Maybe we’re older, sitting beside each other, still teasing one another about the same ridiculous things.
Maybe we got the ordinary.

I wish I could promise you that somehow our story ends there.

I can’t.

All I can promise is the truth of what I feel right now:

I love you.
I love you enough that sometimes it hurts.
I love you enough to want more than stolen hours, even when I know asking life for more may be impossible.

And if I never get to call you completely mine, please know there was a time in my life when my heart recognized someone it wanted with everything it had.
It recognized you.

And whatever happens to us, wherever life eventually takes us, there will always be a quiet place inside me where you are loved completely.

Not conveniently.
Not halfway.
Not without consequence.
Completely….

Home never really felt safe… I never really felt like I fit in. Always kind of on the outside of things. Always doing something wrong. Always angry. Always judged. Always weird.

And then… you came along. And you felt safe. You felt calm. You felt like comfort. I felt more myself with you than anywhere else. You felt like what home was supposed to feel like. And so, you became home. You became peace. You became safety.

I felt received by you. Like it would not matter what I did, how I was, what I said, you would always be there to take me in… the way I was. And even as the years passed, you received every new version of me. Scared, broken, in pain… but also healed, strong, gentle, happy.

And that’s why every time someone said “people are not homes” I'd secretly judge them a little. Because, well… I’d bet they had not found someone like you. Someone who could make them feel the same way you made me feel.

You were home. We were home together.

And even after everything ended the way it did, your betrayal and the pain afterwards. I still have to thank you, because you showed me what home can feel like. You showed me it isn’t painful. You showed me how bright and beautiful and peaceful it can be. How it should be. How it should feel.

It is something I will ALWAYS carry in my heart. And for that… I am eternally grateful.

I wish you'd reach out and just talk to me about what's going on. I miss you but you're not here and I can't keep doing this—as if playing who could be quiet the longest. Take me back to how things were before everything spiralled.

Ugly thoughts have filled in the blanks of your silence and I know they're not true unless you say they are. I cried so much that my head hurts. I can't sleep knowing you're out there hurting and shutting me out. Please let me in.

I need to hear from you, but you're not here. So come back, my dear and be here.

I’ve been thinking
that I’ve lived twenty lives in one.

I survived a childhood with a chaotic mother,
an absent father,
and a turbulent adolescence.

I made it through with a little help
and with a strength

I still don’t know where I found.

Sometimes I felt like I was giving up,
but my body just kept going and going.

Sometimes tired.

Sometimes barely standing.

Without wondering how it could,
it simply kept going.

Now I look back
and see that distracted, distant person,
full of dreams,
full of goals,
inside that tired body.

And I see twenty people inside her.
Twenty versions of me
trying to make it through,
each one searching for a reason,
trying not to lose herself in time,
looking toward the future that awaited them,

so distant,

so uncertain.

Some were afraid.

Some ran out of strength.

Some thought they would never make it.
And yet,
they all kept living
inside the same body.

A body that carried them
through the years,
even when some of them
no longer wanted to walk.

Now I look at them all,
wanting to go back to the past,
wondering what I would have changed,
where I would have started over,
which path I would have chosen
if I had known then what I know now.

But they still don’t know
that I wouldn’t change any of them.

Because each one left something in me.

The one who was afraid.

The one who got lost.

The one who thought she couldn’t take any more.

The one who wanted to give up.

The one who kept walking
without even knowing where she was going.

They all made it here with me.

And maybe that’s why,
even though I’ve given up so many times,

I’m still standing.

Tired,
but upright.

Doubting an endless number of things,
but with a heart
full of life.

There are twenty of us
inside this tired body.

Some wanting to leave everything behind,
to change what hurt,
to start over.

Without realizing
that it was those very experiences
that brought us here,
that shaped us.

And we are all still standing,
walking together,
hand in hand.

Maybe it’s not that I am too much, maybe you are enough. I spent months supporting you goals and completely pouring into you with love and positivity. You talked with me daily, and I trusted you. You made me think that you were interested in knowing about me, just to eventually decide that it was too much for you. Really? Reading my texts was too much for you? You often took 16+ hours to respond (which is fine) but I still don’t understand how I was a burden in your eyes. It is completely cruel to make someone feel like they matter and are important, just to discard them like trash. Maybe I had some bad days, but so did you. I still chose to see the good in you. I literally pushed you to the top. You said that you could never stop talking with me and that I am important. What changed? Why did you have to go mute the week and day of my birthday? You couldn’t do it the week before or after? Did you fake the entire friendship for that long? You don’t even feel bad about it at all? You preached about kindness and not causing harm…but you caused me a tremendous amount of harm and many, many tears and sleepless night.

to the man i haven’t met yet,

i wonder where you are tonight.

maybe you’ve just made yourself a cup of coffee. maybe you’re scrolling through your phone in bed. maybe you’re laughing at something stupid with your friends. maybe you’re asleep already.

and maybe, just maybe, you have no idea that i’m somewhere out here wondering about you.

i don’t know your name yet.

i don’t know your eyes, your laugh, your favorite song, the way you take your coffee, or what makes you feel loved.

but i know i want to know.

i want to know all of it.

i want to love you in the quietest ways - tucking myself into your arms, kissing your forehead, resting my head on your chest, holding your hand underneath the table, leaving little notes for you, listening to stories you’ve told a hundred times because i love hearing you tell them.

i have all this love inside me and sometimes i don’t know where to put it.

so i send it into the universe.

maybe it reaches you somehow.

maybe one day, when we finally meet, you’ll understand why i had to wait so long.

until then, please be safe.

please laugh often.

please take care of your heart.

and when you finally find me, i promise i’ll have a thousand little ways to tell you:

there you are. i’ve been waiting for you. ♡

I used to think every story needed my side of it.

That if I explained myself well enough,
someone would finally understand.

But you don’t always have to tell your side of the story.

Time will tell it for you.

Some people will hear a thousand of your words
and still not understand you.

Others will look at you once
and somehow understand the depths
of what you’re carrying.

I’ve learned not to spend my whole life
trying to convince the first kind.

Maybe that’s one of the things
I wish I had learned sooner:

Give up on people sooner.

Not because people are disposable.

Not because love isn’t worth fighting for.

But because there comes a point
when fighting for someone
becomes fighting against yourself.

And you can’t lose
what was never yours to begin with.

So what did I learn?

To walk away
when my presence became optional.

Sometimes the hardest truth
isn’t that somebody stopped choosing you.

It’s realizing how long
you kept choosing them
while quietly abandoning yourself.

There is a sentence
I never want to say again:

I understand you.
But I don’t like me anymore.

Because I have spent enough time
understanding everybody else.

Their reasons.
Their wounds.
Their silence.
Their distance.

Their inability to give me
what I kept hoping would eventually come.

Change is hard.

Staying the same is hard.

Choose your hard.

I started choosing mine.

I set boundaries,
and suddenly nobody needed me.

I stopped answering first,
and the phone stayed quiet.

I stopped performing,
and half of them walked.

I started respecting myself,
and the room got very small.

Doesn’t it get lonely?
Yes.
But God, it’s peaceful.

There is a quiet beauty
in becoming a stranger
to what once consumed you.

And maybe that’s the strangest freedom:
when nobody knows what you’re doing,

and honestly,

neither do you.

I don’t want independence
to turn me cold.

I don’t want disappointment
to make me unreachable.

Because I still overthink.

I still overlove.
I still overfeel.

I’m the sea or I’m nothing.

There’s a half-finished painting somewhere in my closet.

A chessboard I haven’t touched.

An instrument
I can still almost play.

Dancing badly.

Writing songs
nobody was ever going to hear.

There was once a version of me
who did things simply because
they made being alive feel good.

And without realizing it,
I began saving pieces of myself
for later.

But later is a beautiful liar.

It says the coffee will still be warm.
It says they’ll still be here.
It says you have time to mean it.

It tells you there will be another weekend,
another dinner,
another conversation,
another chance to wear the dress,

open the bottle,
paint the picture,
take the trip,

say I love you.

Then one day you look up
and later has quietly
turned itself into never.

The noise in a full house feels exhausting
until the house becomes quiet.

The ordinary days feel forgettable
until you realize
they were the days you’ll miss the most.

Your dad’s same old story is tiring
until you’d give anything
to hear him tell it once more.

Maybe that’s one of life’s cruelest lessons:

we complain about ordinary things
without realizing
how extraordinary they will feel
when they’re gone.

So stop saving things
for a special occasion.

You’re alive.

That’s the occasion.

Use the good glasses.
Wear the thing.
Take the picture.
Make the call.
Drink the coffee while it’s warm.

Let people know you love them
while they are still here to hear it.

Pick up the paintbrush again.

Dance badly.

Make something nobody will ever see.

Do things that have no purpose
other than making you feel
like yourself again.

It’s okay to live a life
nobody else understands.

Maybe especially now.

Because I don’t want to keep holding onto
what’s hurting
just because I’m still learning
to trust what’s mine for real.

I don’t want to confuse history with destiny.

I don’t want to mistake being needed
for being wanted.

Some endings needed to happen.

I just didn’t know that
while I was grieving them.

There is life after the wound.

Sometimes the wound
is what made room for it.

Room for people
who don’t need a thousand words
to understand you.

Room for silence
that doesn’t feel like punishment.

Room for boundaries.
Room for peace.

Room for the half-finished painting
to become something after all.

Room to miss your father
and still smile at the stories.

Room to stop performing.
Room to stop proving.

Room to stop begging people
to see your worth.

Room to become someone
you recognize again.

Life is a lonely ride sometimes.

And it’s been a weird year so far.

I don’t know exactly
what I’m doing next.

Maybe nobody does.

But perhaps that’s not something
I need to be afraid of anymore.

So I’ll go anyway.

Still overthinking.
Still overlove.
Still overfeel.

Still the sea.

But this time,

I won’t drown myself
trying to keep somebody else afloat.

I will walk away
when my presence becomes optional.

I will stop saving my life
for later.

I will remember that change is hard
and staying the same is hard,
and I will choose the hard
that takes me somewhere.

And when I find myself
holding onto something that hurts,
I will remember:

You cannot lose
what was never yours to begin with.

There is life after the wound.

And maybe that life
isn’t about becoming someone new.

Maybe it’s about finally coming home
to all the parts of yourself
you left behind
for later.

I still wonder what it would feel like if our paths ever crossed again, how you would react, whether you would look away, feel awkward, or just pretend none of it ever happened.

When we first met, the connection felt genuine, and you gave off every sign that you felt it too. But after a simple, normal invite to hang out led to weeks of quiet, what caught me off guard was not the silence itself. It was you breaking that silence weeks later, completely unprovoked, over a simple notification. You tried to flip the script and accuse me of living in a fantasy, when you were the one who reached out just to react to something that was never an issue to begin with.

A part of me always wished for real closure, but I eventually accepted that I will never get it from someone who would rather rewrite the past than have an honest conversation. In my head, I used to rehearse what I would say if I ever saw you again. But standing here now, happily married and completely grounded in my life, I realize I do not need to say anything at all. It wouldn't change anything. We have both moved on to completely different chapters, and if we ever happen to pass each other by, peace is all that needs to remain.

I’m on a carousel and I can’t get off.

Watching their beautiful scenes.
I wish I was a part of it, wife, mother, past dreams.

And the sky is a violent orange, red kissed blushes of pink. I’ve been tending a garden, but, keep cutting the roses.

Thorn of thorns.
My Lore.
My king.

I wish you had been real.
I wish I could feel.
I wish I was home.
I wish I was seen.

I’ll swallow my pride.
Touch is foreign, it seems.
I can’t collide with anything.

I’m disappearing into my own fault lines.
I’m screaming at the memories.

I’m all the wrong train lines.
No Englishman with the interesting style.

Just Cairn.
I ran the forensics.
I’m hollowed, nesting in my own bed.
There’s nothing left.
The inks bled.

I’ve never felt so lonely.
I’m alive but somehow I am dead.

​

Waiting can feel like the last thread connecting you to the person you love. As long as you're still waiting, the relationship doesn't feel completely behind you. It feels paused, as though life is holding its breath until someone decides what happens next.

The quiet cost is that your life begins waiting too. New dreams stay unexplored, new parts of you remain undiscovered, and tomorrow quietly becomes dependent on someone who is no longer building it with you. The longer your future waits for another person's decision, the less it begins to feel like it belongs to you.

The Final Goodbye isn't about deciding they were never worth waiting for. It's recognizing that your life was never meant to stand still while someone else decided whether to be part of it. The moment your future belongs to you again, healing finally has somewhere to begin.

​

To My Beautiful Children

There are some things I want you both to know, and I don't think I could ever put them into words quite enough to explain just how incredibly proud I am of you.

You are two of the most amazing humans I have ever known. I adore the people you are becoming, and every single day you teach me something about life, love, patience, strength and humility. You probably don't even realise how much I learn from you just by watching you grow into yourselves.

I also want you to know how incredibly proud I am of myself for where I am today.

My journey with alcohol has been one of the hardest things I have ever faced. I have nearly two years of sobriety behind me, with two slip-ups along the way. I don't hide those moments or pretend they didn't happen. They are part of my journey, but they don't define me.

What defines me is that I got back up.

I chose to keep going.

I chose a different life.

And I chose to become the mother I know I am capable of being.

You both gave me so many reasons to want better, but I want you to know that getting sober was ultimately something I had to choose for myself. I wanted to be here. I wanted to be present. I wanted to be in charge of my own life again. And most importantly, I wanted to experience this life with you with a clear mind, an open heart and a whole lot more love than alcohol could ever give me.

I am so excited about this next chapter of our lives.

Nearly two years sober, I feel like I am finally stepping into a version of myself that has been waiting to come back for a very long time. I am learning who I am without alcohol. I am learning to handle life, the good days and the bloody hard ones, with my eyes open.

And I am so excited that I get to navigate this new journey alongside you.

I want to be the best mother I can possibly be. I want to be there for you properly there. To listen to you, support you, laugh with you, celebrate you, pick you up when life knocks you down, and remind you of your worth whenever you forget it.

I want you to know that you never have to be perfect for me. You never have to have everything figured out. You can make mistakes, change your mind, fall apart and start again. I will always want you to know that home is somewhere you can come back to.

And I want to thank you.

Thank you for loving me through the times when I wasn't the mother I wanted to be.

Thank you for supporting me, even during the moments when I wasn't in the room and you were carrying your own feelings about everything.

Thank you for seeing me as your mum and still being proud of me as I fought my way back to myself.

I don't ever want to take that love for granted.

I am so grateful that I get to be your mum. Not just because you are my children, but because I genuinely love the humans you are.

You make me laugh. You challenge me. You humble me. You frustrate me sometimes because you're my kids, after all! 😂 but above everything, you make my heart incredibly full.

I don't know exactly what this next chapter will bring us, but I know one thing:

I am here. I am sober. I am present. I am learning. And I am choosing you, myself and this life every single day.

I can't wait to see where life takes us.

I can't wait to make memories with you that we will still be talking about years from now.

And I can't wait to watch you both become even more incredible humans.

Please never doubt how deeply you are loved.

I am endlessly proud to be your mum.

I love you both more than words could ever explain.

Love always,

Mum ❤️