Letters from February
Anonymous letters from this month's exchanges
Dear Stranger,
Happy February to all of you. I hope you’re staying warm, or at least finding small comforts wherever you can.
This month we had eight people write letters. Four exchanges happened. And now, with permission, here are some of those letters.
But first before you read thm I need your help.
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Okay. Here are February’s letters.
February’s prompt was: “Write about love you’ve never expressed, or love you wish you’d received.”
Letter 1
Dad,
I really believed there would be more time.
More ordinary afternoons. More chances to say the simple things that somehow felt hard to say.
I loved you. Maybe I didn’t express it enough. But I loved you the best way I knew how. Now I carry your name and our memories with me everywhere I go.
I wish I had told you that I was proud to be your daughter. That even when we didn’t understand each other, I still chose you in my heart. Always
I hope, wherever you are, you know that.
Letter 2
To the person I should have loved first,
I’m writing to you, the one I abandoned to choose someone else’s comfort over my own truth. The one I taught that love meant erasing yourself until there was nothing left.
It began with not allowing you to heal and become whole before giving your love away. I was careless, handing away your love at the first instant instead of choosing you. I only learnt later that you receive complete, deep, real love when you are whole yourself. I wish I had known this earlier. My fear put you through pain you didn’t deserve.
I never told you that you mattered. That your pain was real, your needs valid, your boundaries sacred. And when you mustered up the courage to ask, I silenced you to serve the needs of another. I taught you to apologise for taking up space, to shrink so others could expand.
While I was bending and breaking for someone who couldn’t see me, I was building a version of love in my head where I didn’t have to choose between being loved and being myself. Where I could speak my truth without it becoming an inconvenience. Where I was enough without proving or sacrificing.
But I never gave that love to you. I gave it away to someone who didn’t even know how to hold it, while you carried all this weight and got only my neglect.
I loved you by disappearing. How could I expect someone else to see your worth when I chose to not see it myself?
I wish I had told you that you deserve to be chosen. That you deserve a love that doesn’t cost you yourself. But I convinced you that loving you meant being selfish. That your needs were negotiable. I wish I’d been braver for you.
I lost years waiting for someone else to love me the way I refused to love you. I kept hoping they’d become the person who could see my worth, while I stood here, unable to see it myself. I probably deserved what I got, right?
The love I owed you exists only in hindsight now, in the aching clarity of what I should have done differently. I wish I’d chosen you, spoken up for you, and loved you fiercely enough to walk away from anyone who required your silence. I wish I’d not hollowed you out for the sake of loving another.
I’m sorry I made you wait so long to matter.
I’m learning now, slowly, painfully, to choose you and give you the love I wish I’d received myself all along. It’s unfamiliar to me, but I will not let you down again.
Letter 3
( to everyone )
friendzoned at 12
polyamorous at 35
i've always questionned
everything choices
labels feelings careers
hobbies
not that one
isn't enough
when we speak love
more and more
would be more like it
i say poly
when my love can spread
i say poly
when people is all i need
friendzoned at 12
polyamorous at 35
got cheated on
instantly, i forgive
no magic, but
she was there
for something else
friendzoned at 12
polyamorous at 35
almost kissed
on a road trip
perfect scenery
nobody moved
but our hearts for each other
and our love grew
in the depths of pain
friendzoned at 12
polyamorous at 35
high school first real
feelings love
couldn't even name
what was
her eyes
i longed for
her arms
i needed hugs
her smile
i couldn't resist
friendzoned at 12
polyamorous at 35
love is life
life is love
heart is love
and life is heart
friendzoned at 12
polyamorous at 35
don't think
you don't deserve
what we are all
here for.
Letter 4
Dear Stranger,
There is a kind of love that never makes it into the air.
It lives in the back of the throat. In the almost-text. In the pause before goodbye.
I have loved like that before.
I have loved in the way you hover your hand near someone’s back but never quite touch them. I have loved in the way you memorize a laugh because you’re afraid it might disappear. I have loved by saying everything except the one sentence that mattered most.
I don’t know why I swallowed it. Fear, maybe. Pride. Timing.
I told myself there would be another moment. A better moment. A braver version of me.
There wasn’t.
And then there is the love I wish I had received.
I wish someone had looked at me in my most uncertain seasons and said, “You don’t have to earn this. You already have it.”
I think we spend so much of our lives trying to be chosen that we forget we were worthy before anyone decided.
If I could go back, I would say the words. I would let them land wherever they landed. I would risk the tremble in my voice. I would choose honesty over safety.
And now, I am learning to give myself the love I once waited for. To speak what I feel while it is still warm. To stay.
Maybe that is what healing is, not rewriting the past, but refusing to be silent in the present.
These letters. The love withheld from the person who needed it most. The love that lived in the throat, unspoken. The love for a father that ran out of time.
Thank you for trusting the Dear Stranger community with what you couldn’t say out loud.
Thank you for being part of this space.
P.S. At the beginning of next month, you’ll receive March’s prompt in your inbox. You’ll write, send your letter into the world, and receive one back from a stranger. It’s anonymous, honest, and unlike anything else in your inbox.
With love,
Dakkota Lane
Curator of Dear Stranger