Read This When You’re Grounded

Dear E,

I’ve been thinking about the letter you wrote me. I couldn’t respond at the time — not because it didn’t matter, but because I was overwhelmed in ways I didn’t even understand yet. I’m sorry I went quiet. You didn’t deserve that silence. When you said you felt like you were losing me… you were right. I was losing myself. And I didn’t know how to let you see that. I don’t want to keep hiding from you.

Before you keep reading, do me a favor — read this when you’re grounded. Not mid-spiral. Not mid-chaos. I want the version of you that breathes first and reacts second.

You’ve always been the one who could see through me. You saw the AuDHD before I even had language for it. You saw when I couldn’t mask anymore. You saw the CPTSD. You sat with my mania episodes without flinching. You let me be intense without trying to dim me. That meant everything.

And when you needed steadiness… I disappeared.

That’s the part that sits heavy in my chest.

This past year has shaken me more than I’ve let on. The unmasking wasn’t just “oh cute neurodivergent realization.” It was identity-shifting. Grief-inducing. It cracked open old trauma. And on top of that… I experienced SA. I haven’t known how to hold that, let alone explain it. My nervous system has been on survival mode, even when I looked “fine.”

None of that excuses my silence. But it explains it.

I didn’t pull away because I stopped loving you. I pulled away because I didn’t know how to let you see me that broken without feeling like I was going to break you too.

And maybe that was unfair. Because you’ve never been fragile with me.

You have always handled my heart gently. You’re still the only one who ever let me down softly instead of traumatically. That’s rare. That’s sacred.

I don’t need you to fix me. I don’t need you to save me. I just don’t want to pretend distance was intentional when it was really me drowning quietly.

I love you. In that deep, soulmate, protective-devotion kind of way that doesn’t fit clean labels and probably never will.

If you’re open, I’d like to talk. Not to recreate the past. Not to force anything. Just to meet each other honestly again.

— J