My Love,

There're so many things I need to tell you…

Here I am, sitting at my tiny kitchen table, thinking about you. Again. Just like every night since… well, since what seems like forever to me.

More than a decade after our last exchange, I'm still feeling the same heartbreak. Tears are rolling down my cheeks as my hand draws each letter and my heart hurts like crazy. The right description would probably be that my heart feels like a plate that has been broken in a thousand little pieces, not quite sure to ever find a way to stick the pieces back together. Every time I come across two people holding hands, I think of us. How would it be if we had been able to stay together? It's too hard to think of that.

I keep hurting myself – isn't it completely insane? I start crying every time a love song comes up on the radio. But I keep listening to them anyways because that's the only connection I have left with you, the songs we loved and listened to together. Tiny knives mess with my heart as every single word resonates. I miss you more than I can ever say and at least I have a little bit of you when I let myself cry thinking of us.

I want to apologize. I know I already have, but I need to do it again. I feel like I failed you, maybe I didn't give you enough time, maybe I should have fought harder or differently. I let you slip through my fingers way before a decade ago and should have known how to keep you then. I don't know anymore, I just feel like I'm responsible in some way for being away from you.

I should have told you how I truly felt before leaving your apartment ages ago, which led to my accident. I think I wasn't ready at the time. I had a hard time admitting all those feelings I had for you. It was so scary. I felt like it was more than I could handle. Honestly, what happened then was one of the most painful things in my life but I wasn't grown enough, mature enough to pursue our dream. I know that now. Things happen for a reason. Today, I'm so different. I know how to deal with my emotional triggers way better, I know myself better and life has changed me, taught me so many precious lessons. I had to learn to face my own demons and deal with them on my own. No one should have to do it for me. Jack taught me that. So I am different, yes, but still so in love with you. It's insane how feelings never die. They even seem to increase by the minute threatening to jump out of my chest anytime. I sense that I'm being consumed by them as part of me is missing.

I'm so sorry for the silence I grunted you with for so many long years. I pushed you away so many times, feeling anxious and lost, not knowing how to communicate, how to deal with someone else in the picture. I was scared of so many things, still so attached to my family, not quite sure if I could fly on my own and make my own decisions. I know I hurt you so many times because of my silence and I'm forever sorry for the pain I caused you. I kept the truth for myself way too many years and let it tear us apart. I know we have talked about it but I never stopped feeling guilty about those years. Guilt, just like feelings, expands over the years as in this precise situation I feel like things could have been completely different if I had simply talked to you on that rainy day.

Anyways… does it really matter today? Probably not. The past is the past and no one can change it. If you're reading my words, it means I didn't make it and lost my battle against Jack, the man I should never have married in the first place. This letter won't bring me back to life, won't erase any of my mistakes... but at least I know I laid out for you my truth and my feelings, all the things I wish I had told you before leaving this world.

I feel like I haven't thanked you enough. Sometimes we're blinded by our issues and forget to be more vocal. When we finally got back in touch, I never dared to speak to you about the way I had left you that morning. I was afraid of having done the unforgivable and kept silent once again. I felt so shameful for my behavior. So if you never have to think of me again and never mention my name again as I am now no longer part of this life, I need you to know how thankful I am.

Thank you for loving me through my worst days and hanging in there for so long. You are one of the few people on this planet that knows all of me, the good and the bad. You just know it all and it strangely didn't make you go away. You saved my life more times than I can count and in so many ways. Even if our paths never cross again, I'll be forever grateful to have been lucky enough to have been loved that way once in my life.. I knew how lucky I was but I didn't fight hard enough to keep it. That'll be a regret I'll have to carry with me down to my grave.

I don't know what I'm writing really… probably a goodbye letter but I might not make much sense to you as I'm letting my thoughts ramble out randomly out of my mind and right onto the paper. Maybe you'll never even read it. Words are just words, right? but writing has helped me a lot these last few years. I managed to lay down my feelings, my dreams and my regrets onto a notebook I keep under my pillow. It warms my heart to keep on writing our story because suddenly I feel alive again, fooling myself into thinking I still have you, even if it's just for a few lines. It's still better than my reality.

On the other day, I was chatting with a colleague over the lunchbreak. She was telling me about her disastrous love life. She was craving for true love, that feeling of unconditional love. Loving someone and being loved just as madly in return. How lucky I am to know what it is to love deeply someone and to be loved back, I realized. Anybody would want to be loved by you. I was incredibly lucky to have found you although it didn't last as long as I wish it had.

I know, I know, you're married and I made you promise to carry on without me. You probably found happiness without me as I'm no longer in the picture and haven't been for a long while now – I never thought it would hurt so much to write those words down. Tears keep flowing out uncontrollably as the pain I feel is too strong to keep inside. I hope the kids can't hear me, I'm trying to be as silent as possible.

I guess you have no idea how or where I've spent these last few years. It's the whole point of Witness Protection. No news. No nothing.

Reading your last note was one of the hardest moments of my life honestly. I didn't think it would be so hard on me. We were so meant to be together that I never thought we would ever have to go separate ways again. And in some way, I still struggle to accept the reality I live in. That note and the umbrella. I still have them. I cherish them. You are no longer mine. And life is rather dull, tasteless without you by my side.

I struggled a lot the first years. How was it even possible to say goodbye to the love of my life? For a little while I couldn't even consider watching a romantic movie or looking at those people in love walking in each other's arms in the streets. My eyes would immediately look away and my throat would tighten, suffocating with the tears dying to come out and shout to the world how devastated I was without you. Seing people happy felt like a lie. They show you happy endings in the movies where love always wins. Why couldn't we get our happy ending?

Then after I was done crying myself to sleep every night, I decided to fight. I had had enough of tears, of feeling dead inside. My children needed their mother and I had to pull myself together to get them the life they deserved. I started working so hard. I got myself a job in a supermarket where I made some great friends. I tried my best to create a safe environment for them, despite the circumstances.

After a few years, I even started dating. My neighbor Martha was desperate to see me going out a little and had me going to those speed dating evenings with her. How funny to be there with a seventy year old lady, but at least it felt like a good distraction. I became a warrior at pretending it was all forgotten, that I was over you and could move on. I was rejected by several guys because I didn't want to jump into bed with them. It seems like it's how people get to know each other nowadays. I also met some nice men, but I always ended up finding out about something weird about them.

So at the end of the day I was just so mad to have to start it all over again. I just wanted you and I needed you and I couldn't pretend otherwise. We had promised each other we wouldn't give up on each other. It didn't make sense to me, to imagine giving my body and my soul to anybody else but you. And yet I couldn't have you anymore. I kept dating, hoping to at least try to picture myself with someone else, try to seduce or let myself be seduced by someone. I really tried, Andy. But all those stories ended the same way because all these men had something in common – they were not you. Being around them was so dull compared to what I feel for you. They were competing with a ghost and it was selfish of me to make them believe they even stood a tiny chance to outgrow you. I was not ready to let you go. Not yet. And apparently I'm still not. Every fail with those dates kept reminding me that. I couldn't find a way to accept my new reality. How could I explain to my heart that it had to forget you? How could I accept it when all I wanted and still want is you…

I feel so ridiculous to be so committed to a ghost. It's true, you became sort of a ghost. I cannot have you. I don't even know the person you are today. You probably changed so much just like I did, maybe you even found the love of your life in somebody else and are about to marry again or have new kids or whatever. I used to know you like the back of my hand and I loved every bit of you. But maybe that person doesn't exist anymore… how would I know? I told you to move on and you probably did as I inflicted more pain to you than I ever wanted, first by abandoning you and then by having to forcefully leave you behind once again.

And despite all that, somehow, you're still a reason to not let anyone else in – and it makes absolutely no sense… I'm fully aware. Maybe what I need is to see you happy in your new life. But I secretly hope to never find out because it would hurt too much. I'm not sure I'd be able to see that without falling apart. Remember that Etta James' song "I'd rather go blind"? That's exactly how it would be for me - "I'd rather go blind then to see you walk away from me". It's indescribable, I'm just literally linked to you no matter what I do. But Andy… I do hope you found happiness and haven't been suffering the way I have.

I had a talk with my neighbor Martha. She's so sweet really. Eventually she noticed I wasn't paying much attention to the men I was meeting at those little parties and we sat down one night, to chat a little. She told me about her late husband, the love of her life and instantly knew by the look in my eyes that there was someone. I fell apart talking about you, as I obviously always do whenever I think of you. She told me that what I was feeling was simply called loving someone unconditionally in the purest and deepest level and that's a beautiful and precious thing. It struck me. Most people never find that kind of love, Andy, so I'm a lucky girl. And yet, I can only feel pain when I think of that.

She was just so right, Andy. I know you by heart, I know how you react, how you think. I know your flaws and your most wonderful qualities. I can disagree with you, I can be upset with you but I love you so much, so so much anyways. I love you when you annoy me, I love you when you hurt me, I love you even when you're away from my eyes. I just fucking love all of you despite everything. She was just so right – I do love you unconditionnaly.

Today, I don't know where you are in your life, I don't know in what way you've found happiness, if you've found someone else, if you've forgotten about me. But here are the things you need to know, or at least that I want you to know as I'm no longer able to tell them to you myself.

You're my favorite weird troublemaker and I love how unique you are. You're a fool if you think I never noticed all the little things you did for me, like the hot and delicious coffee, one sugar, no cream, awaiting me every morning on the break room's table or all the surveillance shifts you organized to keep an eye on my children and me. The only wish I have is to get to be with you again in some way. I love you and if I could, I'd marry you now. I'm sure I want you. I want you forever. I want you for better or for worse.

Every time I see a marriage, I think of you. In my heart and my brain it wouldn't even make sense to walk down the aisle in a wedding dress if it's not to meet you waiting for me. Believe me, I've done it once and it couldn't feel more wrong. I would have loved to see your eyes meeting mine on one of the most important days of our lives. I want to call you mine because I'm already yours, always have and always will be.

Sometimes I drive around and I picture us together. I would die to be lucky enough to carry your children. Just imagine it. I would have loved to one day announce you you'd become a dad. The father of a child I would carry. Our child. I know you're an amazing and caring father and already knew it before I even saw you with Nicole and Joey. That's just silly dreams and probably a bit weird and crazy to have these thoughts but believe it or not, they unconsciously put a goofy smile on my face every time they cross my mind despite the tears rolling down my cheeks.

I would have loved to share all that with you, grow old by your side. Numerous have been the nights where I cried myself to sleep, cried in my showers like a baby, cried while driving hearing one of our songs. This has been a hell of a journey to heal from you. People say you never realize what you have until you don't have it anymore. I'm afraid it's a right say. Although I knew what I was losing then and feel it even more today. All I can do now is cry about it as I know it is gone.

I've been craving to talk to you, open my heart to you and express all the things that've been going on in my mind and in my life. You were my best friend, the one person I wanted to tell about anything, from the smallest detail to my biggest fears. I felt like you understood me and knew exactly what to tell me as much as I understood you.

I've also been craving for a very simple gesture. A hug from you. Just being in your arms, my hands clenching your shirt against your back, a silent plea for you to never let me go, ever again. My tears start rolling down uncontrollably whenever that thought crosses my mind. Silly, I know. It's been so many years Andy and yet the pain is still so vivid in my chest. I'd kill to be tightly held by you, just for a minute. But I guess that if you're reading my words, that means I never got to feel once more your arms around me.

Please know that I wish you all the best life can bring you. I hope that you have found your path and will find a long-lasting love that will help you go through life and be happy forever. I wish you to become a daddy again and grace your children's life with all the love you have to offer. You have the purest heart with the purest intentions – never let anyone make you believe otherwise. You deserve the brightest happiness. Stop doubting yourself. You're fucking handsome, you're so smart and so capable. You're determined and you're one of the bravest people I know. If you have a dream go for it, I'll keep my fingers crossed for you even from heaven. I love you, always have and always will. Sorry for letting you go. You'll always be part of me and I will carry you in my heart until I no longer breathe and beyond. Thank you again for all you brought me, all you taught me and for how you loved me. I will never forget you. I hope I'll catch you in the next life, you never know, timing might be better there.

Forever yours,

Sharon

PS: I came across that quote the other day. Beautiful words I wanted to share with you. It's called "No Other".

"There is someone I keep in my heart – I love him and no one else. It is a love that will only die with me.

You may ask, death could be some time away – what if from now to then, you love someone new?

Well I can tell you, there is only one love. If any person claims to have loved twice in all their life – they have not loved at all." - Lang Leav