The Fifth Letter

Dear A,

    I just got back from a wedding. And all I can feel is this dull, persistent ache sitting in my chest like something I forgot how to live without. It doesn’t scream, it doesn’t demand, just lingers, quiet and constant, like breath.

    I’ve said this before; weddings aren’t easy anymore. What once felt tender and full of promise now feels like a quiet unravelling. A reminder dressed in silk and celebration that one day, you’ll stand at the altar, and it won’t be me beside you.

    This time, I was part of the wedding party. I smiled. I showed up. I followed the rehearsed steps. But every movement felt like walking through glass, trying not to break. I watched the ceremony unfold with practiced calm, but inside, something splintered. The universe, in its strange sense of irony, keeps placing me at the heart of the very thing that breaks me again and again.

    Every small detail pulled me back to you. The music, the flowers, the way the light caught on the veil. I couldn’t help but imagine you there, wrapped in joy, radiant in a way that steals breath. Smiling at someone else the way I once dreamed you’d smile at me. I tried to stay present, to honour the moment. But your face kept appearing in the quiet pauses, a shadow that would not leave me.

    I’ve held love before, or something that resembled it. Eight years with someone who never quite fit, who loved the world loudly while I craved quiet corners. When it ended, it ended clean. I saw them again once and felt nothing, just a gentle fading. Another time, I was drawn to someone I barely knew. That one lived on screens and silence. It took three years to let go of a connection that never really began.

    But you, you're different. You feel like home in a way I cannot explain. As though you carry pieces of me I didn’t know were missing until I found them reflected in your quiet. Letting go of you doesn’t feel like healing. It feels like surrendering something sacred.

    I don’t understand why we met the way we did. Why our paths wove so closely only to split before the story could take shape. I keep searching for meaning, as if answers could soften the blow. But the pain stays, still, steady, unbearable in its quiet. Like a stone buried deep inside me that no prayer seems to lift.

    There are nights when I whisper into the dark, asking God what I did wrong. Wondering if this is penance for wanting too much. The ache is relentless. Not just the grief of losing you, but the grief of never having the chance to begin. You were worth every heartbeat, every tear. But this sorrow, it’s something else. Something deeper. A hollowing I cannot escape.

    I've asked every question I know how to ask. I've begged for peace in every language I have. Still, the silence answers. And sometimes I wonder if I was never meant to be loved the way I love, fully, quietly, without condition. Maybe something in me was always meant to remain just outside the warmth I long for most.

Yours,
H