Dear {Name Redacted}: A Letter I’ll Never Send
- Katherine Tatsuda
- Sep 17
- 2 min read
September 17, 2025
Dear G,
I don’t need answers anymore.
And I’m not asking you to explain.
But there’s still a quiet part of me
that remembers what I hoped we could be.
I remember the version of you I fell for.
The one who was thoughtful.
Funny.
Gentle with the dogs.
Generous in small ways that felt like care.
I remember the way I laughed around you,
how rare that kind of laughter had become for me.
I remember feeling like I could just be.
No performance.
No fixing.
Just presence.
And I remember the first time you looked at me like I was precious.
It disarmed me.
It made me believe I had finally found something true.
I know now that much of it wasn’t what I thought.
There were pieces missing,
truths you never shared,
layers you kept hidden,
choices you made that altered everything.
But the part that’s still tender doesn’t hate you.
She doesn’t want to go back.
But she still grieves the version of you she believed in.
The man who hiked 107 miles with me.
The man who bought me a lawnmower spark plug because he “really loved” me.
The man who bought me a cast iron frying pan to help protect me.
The man who held me while I cried,
and made me feel, for a little while,
like I wasn’t carrying everything alone.
These were the moments she clung to,
the ones that made her believe it might be real.
And now, they live here.
Not as justification,
but as remnants of a story she has outgrown.
I know now that I was the one carrying it.
The hope.
The emotional labor.
The belief that if I just loved you enough, it would settle the rest.
It didn’t.
And I’ve made peace with that.
But sometimes,
when the light hits a certain way,
I remember the hikes,
the time together on your loveseat,
how well you explained the wind speed necessary to make the American flag fly fully,
the early days before the silence crept in,
before vulnerability became something I had to carry alone.
And I feel it.
The ache of almost.
If you had been honest,
if you had been whole,
if you had been willing to build something real…
Maybe we could have been something extraordinary.
But only with truth.
Only with safety.
Only with both of us showing up with clean hands and open hearts.
I don’t want what we had.
Not anymore.
But I do still wish it had been different.
Not because I miss the illusion.
But because something in me still believes in love that feels like laughter and friendship
and safety in the same breath,
frosted with incredible physical intimacy.
I’ll have that someday.
And so will you, if you ever choose to live in your truth.
Until then,
this is my soft goodbye.
Not a plea.
Not a performance.
Just the part of me that needed to be heard.
The part that loved you
before she knew
what you were capable of.
K
