Part 1: To the future I thought was ours

This is part one of my letters to you. I posted it originally and then deleted it. I thought this would be the only one. I wish it had been, instead, you came back and ripped open my wounds again. That letter will come later.

you were so vivid in my mind, so tangible i could almost feel the way it would've been to wake up next to you.
i imagined dancing in the kitchen, creating a home, and laughing until we couldn't breathe. i pictured children, the ones we gave names to in passing, faces built from a blend of mine and the "man" i thought was all the good things in the world.

now i'm left mourning people who will never exist, never even had the chance. little lives i will never carry. a future i never actually had. a partner who never truly knew me, because he never existed in the way i believed.

you were supposed to be something i could hold. something safe. instead, you became something i have to let go of just to survive. i know now that the man i was dreaming with was never really there. that the words he gave me weren’t real. that the face i saw when i pictured our life together wasn’t even the person speaking to me. and still, my grief is real, because i was real.
i was real.

my love was real. the belief, hope, and tenderness, all mine. all real.
i don’t even know how to forgive you for not being real, i don’t even know who i’d be forgiving. and yet, i still find myself holding pieces of you, pieces i never got to confirm, but that i carried like the truth anyway. i wish i could separate the face from your words, the dreams, the safety i felt. i wish so badly i could just erase the version of you you created in my head, but stupidly i still hold my breath when i think of you.

so today, i say goodbye. to the future i imagined and would have given anything for. to the love i craved so badly, to having been seen and known so perfectly. to the children i pictured in sleepy daydreams. i could have loved you.

this is my goodbye, not just to you, but to everything i gave to you and this. my love, vulnerability, and the dreams i allowed myself to believe. i don’t regret the kindness and love i showed you, but i will forever mourn and grieve what it cost me.