Letter #61: I LET MYSELF GRIEVE TONIGHT

Dear Clark,

Tonight I let myself grieve. I stayed in the apartment all day and did the things that kept the machine of my life working in the quietest ways. None of it felt cinematic. It felt like the smallest, most stubborn acts a person can do to stay human.

I cried after lunch. It was sudden and not dramatic. Just the way a memory presses where it has been growing sharp. My mind replayed the time we ate together, how we laughed, how you always put food on my plate first, how you always make sure I am well fed. I put my spoon down and the world narrowed until it was only the chair, the table, and a hollow in my chest. Tears began to fall. It was quiet crying, but it hurt. In the shower, I whispered your name, "Clark" and the syllable felt heavy and necessary. I cried there too, until the sound of the water and the sound of my grief braided together.

I do not write because I want answer. I write because someone once taught me that speaking truth into the darkness helps shape it into something comprehensible. The truth is I miss you. I miss the small things you did that made ordinary hours feel safe. I miss the laughter that used to be easy between us. I miss the future we were building.

The rest of the day was quiet. I fed Arlo, our puppy. Yes, I named him Arlo, after the virtual baby we once shared. He is small, soft, and alive. He gives me a reason to stay here, even when it hurts. He asks for my presence in a way that grief cannot. Naming him after our virtual Arlo wasn't meant to replace anything. It was my way of remembering while also moving forward.

I wrote something raw online today. I posted that I was tired and that I wanted to die. A stranger replied with blunt kindness: "Pwede kang mapagod pero hindi ka pa pwedeng mamatay." It was not the eloquent comfort anyone would hope for, but someone reached back and told me, in blunt terms, that my life is not theirs to consent to end.

I don't look forward to the dates we once circled together anymore. Your birthday, Christmas, New Year's, my birthday, Valentine's, they feel less like celebrations and more like checkpoints that will remind me of what I no longer have. I do not know when that will change. I do not know how long it will take for calendars to stop pricking me the way a seam rubs raw. But I do know that tonight, in the middle of sorrow, I tried to keep breathing.

If you read this, know that I am not asking you to come back. I only want you to understand that the leaving left a map of small absences in my life. I am living with those absences now, and I am learning, painfully, to move through them. I am keeping the letters I wrote to you safe until I have the courage to burn them. That is my ritual of closure, my way of finally placing the story somewhere other than my chest.

Please understand, too, that there is still love here. Love does not fold neatly because a door was shut. It lingers in the way my phone lights up and the absence is like a physical ache. But love can coexist with the conscious decision to choose myself. I am trying to do that, to carry the memory of what we had while refusing to let it be the only thing that defines me.

I want you to know this: I am trying. I am trying to live, even when I don't want to. I am trying to move forward, even if my feet feel cemented to the past. I am trying to figure out who I am without you. And please know that even through the pain, I am choosing to live. Not perfectly. Not strongly. But honestly.

With what I still carry,
Alyssa (Phineas, Arlo, Fifi, and Mang)

Last updated on:2025-09-24T08:49:14+05:30