This week while taking a long drive home, this writing prompt came to me completely out of nowhere. Recently, I have been having lots of conversations about closure and what it looks like with a friend of mine currently going through a breakup. One of the conclusions I have came to is, there are varying degrees of closure that tend to come at many different points after the end of a relationship. Unfortunately, ninety percent of the time the end of a relationship does not come with the closure we were hoping for. Even if we are lucky enough to get closure in the moment something else can happen months later that reopen wounds, starting the cycle over again. This post is going to be on the personal side but I am hoping that it provides any closure that I may not have known I needed. My other hope is that it inspires my readers to write their own “To all the Boys I’ve Loved Before” letter, healing wounds they didn’t know needed healing.
To my first love,
Your first love is always something magical and I am absolutely convinced of this. For most, I can only assume it’s usually a short lived (but fiery) teenage romance that ends in piles of tears. Ours was no exception of course. Looking back at our child-like love I have nothing but good memories and whole hearted laughs. Looking back, this love was the only love I had where I was not focused on the future. I wasn’t thinking about the next step in our relationship because I was stuck in a constant state of exhilaration exploring the unfamiliar territory of a teenage romance. I remember feeling anxious when you weren’t around, nervous when you were and giddy when I was waiting for you to come over. Teenage relationships aren’t suppose to last long but somehow my fifteen year old self got us to last almost a year, and I was delighted. I find it heartwarming and innocent that I still remember the day I walked up to you and told you that I liked you. I wish you nothing but the best and I will always hold a piece of you in my memories.
Love, Rhae
To the man who became my lesson,
At some point everyone has a relationship that they are forces them to learn and grow. Without a doubt, this relationship was absolutely it for me. I am thoroughly convinced that I would not only be where I am at today but I would not be the person I am today without this relationship. While the highs were high, the lows were very low, I saw the best and worst parts of myself come out in our relationship. The tricky park about this though was it was during some of my most crucial years of growth. While a part of me still wishes we could have worked out, I quickly remember the lesson I needed to learn from you. I see how deeply I can love and the need to learn how to let others love me the way I love them. I recognize how my own trauma can cause me to act in ways to hurt others, and how this can’t be an excuse for me actions. I cannot wait for the day that someone else sees your potential and heart the way I saw it. You deserve to be loved
Love, Rhae
To the boy I thought was the one,
Sparks is pretty much how I can describe the start of our relationship. I still don’t know if I was drawn to you because you were unlike anyone I had experienced before, or if it was because we truly had chemistry. Two days into meeting you I remember calling my grandpa and telling him that I thought I had found “the one”. The week we broke up was the week he died and I remember not telling him because I was disappointed that we didn’t work out. Anyway, from the first conversation I had with you I was in hot pursuit, focused on locking you in. I was obsessed with the idea of us, our future together and the places we could go together. I really don’t have many complaints about our relationship. Everything was perfect. I was so in love with everything out you that everyone around me had to hear about it. I think the heartbreak for this hurt so bad because it was extremely unexpected. This was the first time that I experienced liking someone more than they liked me and it sucked. Even though it hurt horrendously, it did not last as long as I had expected. I don’t know yet what I wish for you, but for my sake, I hope you see me one day and realize that I deserve more of an explanation.
Rhae
To my last I love you,
The hardest part about this is that it was the shortest, the “silliest” and quite frankly sounds like it should be the most meaningless. I mean in all honesty we hadn’t even seen each other in person— in a long time that is. You were an old flame that was re-lit unexpectedly. Our few weeks of constant messaging, late night Facetime and phone calls built up my anticipation for seeing you in person again. Even though we had not seen each other in a while I felt so comfortable with you. At the time, life was extremely stressful and you became a shoulder to lean on. The abrupt ending without any explanation felt damaging and wrong. I felt as though you made a significant effort to go “deeper” with me, even when I kept telling you how fragile of a state I was in. I even remember you saying to me, “You always feel at home when you are with me”. At a time in my life with such turmoil and emotional I proceeded with intense caution but it was really hard to not get attached to someone who said stuff like that to me. I looked around at the circle of people in my life that I frequently talked to and I realized you knew me the longest. No one else had put in over a decade of knowing me. For some reason I had found comfort in that and I let my guard drop in a way I haven’t done in a long time. Anyways, I’m different now. I changed a little since this and I’m still trying to decide if it is for the better or not. My therapist and I talked about “the downside of being vulnerable” and this is a downside. My guard is now up but it’s two times thicker, and people are noticing. I hope to see you one day, I don’t really know what I will say. But if I do see you I only hope that you will have an apology.
Love, Rhae
Readers, I encourage you to take the time and sit down and do this for yourself. I think it is extremely empowering and I feel a release from this that I was not expecting. I hope this was not too personal and that you gained some insight from this. If there is something you need to talk about more in depth with me or you would like to send your letters to someone to read, my inbox is always open ❤
Now What? 
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