Secret Love Letters

A letter you write to someone you cannot or will not give it to. The person might be a crush who does not know, a person who is with someone else, someone you lost, or someone in your past. The letter is for you, and for the act of saying it. Whether it ever reaches them is a separate question.

For most people, yes. Writing a feeling down is one of the ways it stops running your life. The letter you do not send is often the one that lets you stop carrying the words around. Keep it in a drawer, a notebook, or a sealed envelope. The point is that it exists somewhere outside your head.

Write it twice. Once for you, in your most honest voice. Once for them, with the parts that would only hurt taken out. Then sit with both for a week. If after a week you still want to send the cleaner version, send it. Most letters that are sent in haste get regretted. Letters sat with rarely do.

Be honest about the situation in the first paragraph rather than dancing around it. Name the wall between you. Then say what you would say if the wall were not there. The honesty makes the letter readable to you in five years. Pretending the situation is something it is not will make you wince later.