Page 77 of To Her

And somehow, that simple acknowledgment had broken something open between us. I'd started to cry, quiet tears at first, then heaving sobs that seemed to come from somewhere deep inside me. She'd moved to sit beside me, her arm around my shoulders, letting me cry it out just as James had done at the airport.

"I've made such a mess of everything," I'd choked out when I could speak again.

"Yes," she'd agreed, her honesty startling me. "But you're here now. You're trying to fix it. That's what matters."

After that, her visits had become the highlight of my weeks. She'd bring me sweets and news from home, and I'd gradually share more with her—about my life back home, about the friends I'd made and lost, about Con. Not everything, not yet. But more than I ever had before.

"He sounds like a good man," she'd said one day, after I'd told her about how Con had helped me through the initial detox, how he'd stayed with me despite everything.

"He is," I'd agreed, a lump forming in my throat. "Too good for me."

She'd frowned at that. "Don't say that, Geraldine. You're worthy of love. You always have been."

I'd wanted to believe her. But there was still so much she didn't know, so much I hadn't told anyone except Dr. Winters. And even with her, I'd only scratched the surface.

The deeper work came in the quiet hours, alone in my room, when I'd sit at the desk and write. Dr. Winters had suggested journaling as a way to process my thoughts, to practice being honest with myself before I could be honest with others. At first, I'd resisted—writing had never been my thing, and the idea of putting my darkest thoughts on paper seemed terrifying.

But one night, unable to sleep, I'd picked up the notebook she'd given me and started to write. Not about my day or my feelings, but a letter to Con.

Dear Con,

I don't know if I'll ever send this. Probably not. But I need to write it anyway.

I'm sorry. For everything. For running away when things got real between us. For not explaining why. For disappearing and then showing up again only when I needed something. For making you watch me self-destruct. For calling you on New Year's Eve and putting you in that position.

You deserve better than what I've given you. You deserve someone whole, someone who doesn't run, someone who can love you without fear.

The truth is, I do love you. I think I have since that first day at the restaurant, when you looked at me like I was the most fascinating person you'd ever met. No one had ever looked at me like that before. It terrified me. Because I knew if you really knew me—all of me—you wouldn't look at me that way anymore.

So here's the truth, or part of it anyway…

And then I'dwritten it all down—the things I'd never told anyone, the reasons I ran, the darkness I carried inside me. It had poured out of me, page after page, until my hand cramped and tears blurred my vision.

When I'd finished, I'd read it over once, then torn the pages from the notebook and burned them in the small metal trash can in my bathroom, watching the flames consume my confessions, my secrets, my shame.

But something had shifted in me after that night. As if the act of writing it all down, of admitting it even just to myself, had loosened something that had been knotted tight inside me for years.

The next day in therapy, I'd told Dr. Winters one of the things I'd written in that letter—not the worst thing, but a start.She hadn't looked shocked or disgusted. She'd just nodded and asked, "How does it feel to say that out loud?"

"Terrifying," I'd admitted. "But also... I don't know. Like maybe it doesn't have as much power over me when it's not a secret anymore."

She'd smiled then, the first real smile I'd seen from her. "Exactly."

After that, I'd started writing more letters—to Con, to James, to my mother, to myself. Most of them I burned after writing, the act of destruction somehow as cathartic as the writing itself. But as the weeks passed and I grew stronger, more stable, I began to consider the possibility of actually sending one.

Not the raw, unfiltered confessions of those first letters. But something honest, something real. Something that acknowledged the past but also looked toward the future.

The idea had come to me during a group session in my eighth week. One of the other patients, a woman named Eliza who was recovering from alcohol addiction, had been talking about her husband.

"I wrote him a letter," she'd said. "Explaining why I drank, what I was trying to escape. Things I could never say to his face. It helped him understand, I think. And it helped me to write it."

I'd thought about Con then, about how much he still didn't know, about how I'd promised to stay in touch but had been sending him only the most superficial updates. And I'd thought about something else too—something Dr. Winters had been pushing me to consider.

That maybe, just maybe, I needed to let him go.

Not because I didn't love him. But because I did. Because he deserved someone who could love him without the baggage I carried, without the damage I was still working to repair.

That night, I'd started two letters. One to Con, telling him everything I should have told him months ago. And one to awoman I'd never meet—the woman Con would love after me, the woman who would give him what I couldn't.

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