Notes On Love- Letter 10

Some relationships don’t end.
They thin out.

Slowly, unjustly.

There is a reason we perceive death as the most violent act. It is weakening to watch our soul slip slowly from our bodies, knowing we cannot save it. Likewise, it is unjust to watch a relationship falter. Long conversations turn into one-word answers. Soulmates become strangers, and the person who once knew everything now walks around knowing barely anything, yet somehow knowing it all at once.

Days turn into months. Months fade into years. And you realise you haven’t spoken for a very long time. The frost has melted, but the sun never came. All the love you once held for each other quietly decayed.

Nothing dramatic happened, and that’s the tragedy of it.

I have failed at loving because I have allowed discomfort to govern me. I let it slit my throat, and I called it drifting apart.

My voice is like a cloud when I need it most. It gathers, heavy and grey, and refuses to rain. Hard conversations feel like an ocean I am told is safe, but I still cannot convince myself dip my feet into.

Avoidance never arrives alone. Drifting apart never just comes; it is built, ignited. It follows something small. An argument, a slight or a big one, a sentence that landed wrong, a tone that bruises more than it should.

I believed that if enough days passed, we would forget the words. But some words are violent when spoken in anger. They carve themselves into you. They become things you cannot repeat without reopening something fragile.

I couldn’t repeat them, so I stayed quiet.
Despite the countless times the words were on the tip of my tongue, I stayed meek.

Sooner than I imagined, our relationship became unfamiliar. And I found myself mourning someone who had not left, but was leaving right in front of me.

Looking back, I was not brave. But I was also not trusting. To say that hurt me is an act of trust. It binds you to someone. It requires you to believe they will not punish your honesty or weaponise your softness, that they will stay.

If a relationship cannot hold those words, what exactly is it holding?

We avoid people because we are afraid that confrontation will make us unlovable.

But avoidance is not terrorising, and it kills closeness without spectacle.

The moment you can look at someone and know you can argue, correct, confess, and they will not retreat, that is communion. That is your person.

The relationships that survive uncomfortable conversations are the ones worth the mess.

The people who stay through honesty are the ones who stay.

If you love them, speak.
If you are hurt, say it.
If you want them to remain, risk it.

Don’t avoid them.

With Love Always,

Fatima

These are my Notes on Love, a February letter series, written every two days of the month. To the versions of ourselves we carry, the selves we’ve outgrown, the lessons we’re learning to unlearn, and the many ways we make room for love lives. If any of this lingers with you, please subscribe.