Dear Love, Please Let Go

Dear Love,

I know you’re an independent soul with a will of fire. I know you’re burning so bright and running so fast like there are flames beneath your feet. I know you know you’re strong, but there are days when your heart feels heavy and your soul feels empty. When those days knock on your door and hold a knife to your throat, I hope you do know you’re not carrying the weight alone.

Dear Love,

I hope you tell me when you’re insecure. I hope you don’t turn off the lights and close your eyes as if that chased the pain away. I hope you don’t keep the worms inside your chest, believing sleep makes you forget. It won’t. I hope you don’t wait for me to sleep so you could cry alone. You have the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen on a human being. Don’t you think I would know if you fake it?

Every time you think about the past, you shall see colors, not sadness.

Dear Love,

I want you to know that you don’t have to be good enough. I want you to know that you don’t have to try your best until your insides are broken. I want you to not dwell on the past and compare yourself to shadows of faded ink. But if you do, I want you to be honest. I want you to let me in so I could heal the darkness within. I want you to bend your chest open so I could share your pain. In a world where everyone demands your lights, I want to hold your hands in the dark.

Dear Love,

I’m right on the top. I’ll be here through dusk and dawn, holding out the ropes for you to climb up back to where you belong. This mountain of love is very dangerous; those dark thoughts you have, they are the bombs right at the bottom. You can fall, love. Just make sure you don’t fall too far away. Make sure the bombs can’t steal you away from me.

“You loved your ex once and you probably still do, so keep those great qualities of theirs close to your heart, which leads me to the final and potentially most radical point: it's OK to stay in love with the parts of your ex that you were always in love with. Love all of those wonderful parts of them. They still exist, they can still make you feel the way you felt for that person. Rather than shutting them out, lean into the unfamiliarity of those feelings and explore them. We lose all the nuance of life when we make it all bad or all good." ― Gwyneth Paltrow

Dear Love,

Remember when we promised to fly together? Don’t fall apart alone. Don’t hide your tears under that blanket. That place should be reserved for your warm embrace and our beautiful dreams. Don’t let the water seep through you, wearing away our favorite stone. Everything is temporary. Everything will slide down that mountainside of mine. Everything except you.

I loved you completely, and you loved me the same. That's all. The rest is confetti. ― Nelly Crain

Dear Love,

Hold on. Don't slip. Don't let the wind in your head be the storm in your heart. I love you for all of your pieces, skin to bone. All that you deem too ugly to show. All that deeply rooted perfects and unclaimed kindness. All that warm feelings of melancholy resented in what's dead and buried. In you, I found someone stronger than anyone I know. I registered the love more profound than what I ever knew humans were capable of. Be mine forever, would you?