Hi my love,

I know it's been years, and this seems out of the blue. I don't know how many pages I've already shredded, how many times I told myself I was being silly, writing to you after all these years. We were only kids after all, 17 years old the last time we saw each other.

Talk about out of the blue. You leaving. I sure didn't see that coming.

We met in the horror house as usual that day, remember? Nobody else dared enter the building after all the stories that had been spun around kids going missing, screams you could hear at night and sightings of lost souls roaming the garden after nightfall. It was our safe space.

Of course, we were terrified the first time we slipped in through a broken window. I squeezed your hand so tight, I still can't believe I didn't break anything. But you said that those lost souls would likely embrace us as one of their own. How could they not, all things considered? Whatever the case, we decided to take the ghosts over our family and so-called friends any day.

Sorry, I'm rambling now. Some things never change, do they?

Anyway, back to that last day. You put your arms around me and dropped a kiss on the top of my head. It was so normal, but I felt a stiffness emanating from you that I had never felt before. I crushed my lips onto yours, trying to stop you from speaking. But, of course, I couldn't stop the inevitable.

"I hope you'll forgive me one day, baby, but I couldn't watch you throw your life away for me. Who knows? Maybe one day in the future, society will be ready for us. That day is not today, and it is not tomorrow. So, I did what I had to do. I'll be leaving in a few hours. There is no backing out anymore; the contract has been signed."

I see it so clearly, the single tear rolling down your left cheek, while you were speaking. The jagged path it took, bouncing off your nose and disappearing between your lips. It's funny really, because I don't even remember if I cried.

All that was so long ago. You've left that forbidden love far behind you. Like I seem to have done. But I want you to know that I didn't let your sacrifice go to waste. I did get married eventually and had children. I might not have been truly happy, but I was content with the choices I made.

Until I opened this newspaper article about the copper who was abducted two days ago in a city 200 miles away from here on a bust gone wrong. I usually stay away from the scaremongering of the news. If at all, I only read the headlines, but something drew me to this story. The article said that they had found him but that he was in a coma and not expected to survive. There was too much trauma. The picture of a grinning man in uniform smiling back at me from underneath the headline took my breath away. The caption underneath the photograph informed me that you are leaving a grieving widow behind and a teenage daughter. I wonder if she inherited that breath-taking smile of yours? It lit up a whole room. You just didn't use it enough. There wasn't a whole lot for you to smile about, I know.

Isn't it unbelievable how your sacrifice killed us but then gave birth to amazing new lives?

I might not have seen you in over twenty years, but I still cannot imagine a world without you.

The question I can't get out of my head is: If I had been more perceptive and had been able to stop you from protecting me, would your body still be lying in a hospital somewhere, your mind free long before your time? It's a moot point, of course, but it haunts me, every time I close my eyes.

I guess I'll never find out the answer. But I truly hope that a kind nurse will read this letter out to you when your family is not there. No use in hurting them any more than they are already hurting. After all, they are about to lose the most amazing man the world has ever seen. I admit that I hate them, just a little bit. Of course, this is my jealousy speaking. They got what I couldn't have.

I pray that you can hear my words when they are read to you. I have to say good-bye this time, when last time I just turned and ran. I was so young. I hated you for leaving me, not getting that all you were doing was looking out for me.

Can love be wrong? I wish I could sit down with you some day and discuss our favourite subject from an adult point of view.

I don't have the answer to that, but I can still feel you in my heart, regardless.

Anyway, my love, this is it. All these years, and I never gave up hope that one day we would meet again. Out of the blue. But our day is never going to come now.

I'm sure that you love your family. You wouldn't have been with them for such a long time otherwise. I know that. But, please, wherever you are going, seal off a tiny section of your heart for me and take a little of my love with you!

Even feeling that I'm betraying my family and yours at the same time and knowing that you will be soaring high above us soon, I will never stop looking for a glimpse of you. Will never stop feeding the hope that miraculously you made it back to this world.

Well, you will probably be visiting with the lost souls of our shelter, before you reach your final destination. Say hello to them from me and thank them for sharing their home with us for the most amazing year of my life.

Always in my heart, never forgotten

Your hidden shame