What I Never Said: The Last Letter. Love Was Present, But Not Possible
When I began this journey, I was still choosing to stay. Now, I’ve chosen to go. This isn’t an undoing of what came before; it’s the kind of truth that unfolds slowly, then cracks everything apart. Some stories stay. Some move on. This one keeps traveling — in me, through time, into whatever comes next.
— Calla Hart
Love was present, but not possible. A final letter on acceptance, attunement, and the lessons we learn when love ends.
A final note from the author of My Dyslexic Husband.
I didn’t plan to share this publicly, but it feels like the right place for it to live — a story that began in love, grew through understanding, and now rests in gratitude.
Nov 11, 2025 — 6:48 AM
Dear M,
There are things I understand now that I couldn’t before.
Not because I wasn’t trying, but because I was still inside the lesson — still believing that if I softened enough, explained enough, or stayed long enough, we’d finally meet in the same place.
I see now that our love was a teacher.
It showed me the difference between effort and attunement — between doing love and being love.
You were always trying to perform, to manage, to make things work in the only way you knew how.
And I was always trying to be seen — to bridge the distance through words, through understanding, through meaning.
I don’t think you were trying to hurt me. But I also don’t think you understood how often I felt blamed instead of protected — how invisible I felt in the moments when I most needed comfort.
And I know I wasn’t trying to hurt you either. I was trying to see us through — to keep believing we could find our way back to each other.
Still, I believe you were trying to love in the way that felt possible to you — through control, through productivity. There was an outward doing and an inward limitation. That was where you felt safe and capable.
And I was trying too — trying to explain, to translate, to make us work. Maybe that was my own version of doing instead of being, my own performance of love. I kept believing that if I could just find the right words, or show enough understanding, it would somehow be enough.
I realize now that I was trying to fix us — because I thought we were broken. I desperately wanted a relationship that felt kind and loving, something steady and real.
And it’s strange, because I think that’s all you wanted too.
I don’t think I ever saw the lesson as one of endurance. If anything, I almost always had one foot out — wanting you to change, wanting you to see what I saw.
After my first marriage ended, something in me vowed never to stay in anything that felt substandard again. So even as I hoped you would rise to meet me, I knew somewhere deep down that if I couldn’t be met in the way I needed and wanted to be, I couldn’t stay forever.
There were times I questioned myself — Why can’t I just love him for who he is? Why can’t I just accept him? I thought that was what love meant. But I see now that I wasn’t just struggling with acceptance; I was slowly abandoning myself.
Maybe that was part of the learning too — understanding the difference between acceptance and self-abandonment. I wasn’t trying to accept you; I was trying to change you. But what I really needed was to stop disappearing inside your limitations.
I believed that if I could just find the right way to explain things — if I could help you see what I saw — we’d finally understand each other, and maybe find our way through.
But you never really understood — not then, and not now.
I learned the sacred truth that empathy without consistency isn’t safe — it asks the heart to open to something it can’t rely on.
Love that flickers teaches you to flinch.
It made me quieter, harder, careful with my tenderness.
I stopped reaching as far, not because I stopped loving, but because I couldn’t keep falling into absence.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t rest anymore.
It was that I hadn’t rested in a long time.
We both can have our peace.
We both can have our freedom.
It’s heartbreakingly simple and complex all at once — the thing we both wanted most, to love and to be loved, couldn’t quite happen between us.
And maybe that’s the saddest and truest part of all: that love was present, but not possible.
With peace and gratitude,
— S (aka Calla Hart)
