AUTHOR'S NOTE
498 Words
I didn’t write this story just to tell a love tale.
I wrote it to breathe again.
To find the pieces of myself scattered in someone else’s goodbye.
I wrote it because there’s a girl — me — who once loved so hard, so deeply, so innocently, it became the safest thing she’d ever known. A kind of love that didn’t knock first. It walked straight in, made a home in her chest, and painted the walls with promises.
And then one day, it left.
You see, I still have the band he gave me. The one he wrapped around my wrist with that goofy grin and told me to never remove — like it meant something forever. And I believed him. God, I believed everything.
I still have the slide from camp too. It was so simple — just a tiny thing — yet it held the weight of a beginning. Our beginning.
Some days I touch them, hold them to my heart, and cry like the girl I was back then — the one who felt chosen, seen, and loved in a way that felt divine. Other days, I smile. Because how lucky am I to have felt something so beautiful it still echoes through time?
Writing this story ripped me open. Every scene, every dialogue, every silence between words — it was all real. Maybe not in names or places, but in emotion. In the ache that never fully left. In the nights I cried into my pillow and whispered his name like it was a prayer. Like maybe God would rewind time and make him stay.
But I also wrote this for you.
If you’re reading this and you’ve loved someone so much it cracked you open… this is for you.
If you’re still holding on to something they gave you — a bracelet, a shirt, a song — this is for you.
If you still whisper “I miss you” into spaces where they used to exist, I want you to know: you’re not alone.
Your love was not foolish. Your pain is not weakness.
You are healing — even when it feels like you’re breaking.
This story is not about forgetting. It’s about honoring love — even the kind that didn’t last.
It’s about learning to breathe without someone who once felt like air.
It’s about choosing to write “The End” not because the love didn’t matter — but because you finally matter more.
So, to the boy who once called me “chicken,”
And to the love that taught me both how to fly and how to fall…
Thank you.
This is me — letting go, one word at a time.
Still healing. Still loving. Still becoming.
And maybe, someday, I’ll take off the band. Maybe I’ll tuck away the slide.
But not today. Not just yet.
Because some things, even when they’re no longer ours, still deserve to be held.
With all my heart,
– Alice
- Writer
