Page 76 of Glitched Play

If you finally bought a decent headset instead of insisting the broken one still worked because you "understood its flaws."

Some people collect souvenirs. Me? I collect memories of conversations.

You once told me every system eventually reveals what it's designed to protect.

I've thought about that a lot lately. Because I think my heart did the same thing. I built walls around it after you.

Not because I stopped caring, but because caring hurt too much.

For a while, I convinced myself that we waited long enough, that we’d come back online one day and say there had been some ridiculous explanation.

That my computer died.

That you moved and forgot to change the last forwarding address.

That life simply got in the way.

Maybe it did. Or didn’t. I don’t know anymore.

What I do know is...something changed tonight.

Not all at once.

Maybe it started weeks ago.

Maybe it started the first day I walked into my new job.

Maybe it started the first time someone looked at me and saw more than a resume.

I wish I could tell you every detail.

I wish I could tell you why my chest feels so heavy writing this. But somehow putting another person's story into our letters feels wrong.

You were my safe place for ten years.

You deserve better than becoming a comparison.

So instead, I'll tell you this.

For the first time, since reading your last letter, someone made me wonder if my heart still remembered how to choose.

That realization fills me with equal parts hope and guilt.

Hope because I honestly believed that part of me had gone quiet forever.

Guilt because it feels like moving forward means leaving you behind.

And I don't know how to do that.

You mattered too much.

You still do.

Maybe that's the hardest part.

Loving what we had doesn't stop life from continuing.

It doesn't stop new people from walking into it.