Write It Before You Need It

“Open when you're angry with me”

I'm writing this on a good day, which is the only honest time to write it. If you're reading it, something has gone wrong and it may well be my fault. I don't need you to stop being angry. Be angry as long as you need — it's not a betrayal of us, it's just information. What I want you to know is that the version of me who wrote this, calm and not defending anything, thinks you're worth the difficult conversation we're presumably not having right now. I'll be here when you want to have it.

— Not going anywhere.

“Open when I've gone quiet again”

I know what my silence does. It reads like I've stopped caring, and it comes across as punishment, and that's not what it is — it's me running out of words before I run out of feelings. I'm working on it. In the meantime, please read the quiet as "I need twenty minutes," not as "I'm done." If it's been longer than twenty minutes, come get me. I'd rather be interrupted than left there.

“Open when you're not ready to talk yet”

You don't have to talk. Genuinely. There's a version of this where I chase you around the flat asking if we're okay, and it makes everything worse, so instead here's a letter that asks for nothing. Put the phone down. Eat something. Take the walk. When you come back I'll still be here and I won't make you perform being fine before you actually are.

— Whenever you're ready. No clock on it.

“Open when you want to walk away”

If it's got that far, I want to say the true thing rather than the reassuring one: some days this is hard, and wanting out is a normal feeling rather than a verdict. I've had it too. What I keep coming back to is that the good parts of us aren't an accident — we built them, on purpose, over a long time, and I don't think we've run out of that. If you still want to go after we've both slept, we'll talk properly. But not tonight, and not while we're both this tired.