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If you’re reading this, then I must have run out of time. I’ve thought of a thousand ways to start this letter, but none of them feel right. Because how do you write goodbye to someone who made you feel like you finally belonged to the world? How do you thank the person who turned every ordinary day into something worth remembering?
Maybe I’ll start simply, I love you. I love you in ways that language can’t carry. I love you in the quiet mornings when you sleep with your arm over my waist. I love you in the way your laughter fills every room. I love you even in silence, when nothing is said and everything is understood. I love you in the way you tie your hair without looking, and in how you speak softly to yourself when you think no one is listening. I love you when you hum while washing the dishes, and when you look tired yet you still choose to smile. I love you when you are angry, when your voice trembles, when you try so hard to remain composed. I love you in all the versions of yourself that only I have been privileged to see. I love you when the sun rises, and I love you when the world falls asleep. I love you when you hold me close, and I love you when you turn away, afraid of how much this might mean. I love you in every silence between our words, and in every heart beat that never learned to quiet itself in your presence.
I will love you when the world moves on, when days begin to blur, and when the sound of my name starts to fade from your memory. I will love you when your tears stop falling, when laughter finds its way back to you. I will love you when you fall in love with someone else again. I will love you even when that truth brings pain, because love was never something I wished to keep. It was something I wished to give, and I gave all of mine to you. I will love you when you forget my favorite songs, when the things I left behind lose their meaning. I will love you when you open drawers and find old photographs and do not know what to do with them. I will love you when you choose to leave them there anyway. I will love you when the scarf you are holding begins to fray, when it no longer carries my scent. I will love you even then. I will love you when it rains, when the city floods, when you think of me without warning while waiting for the train. I will love you when you do not think of me at all. I will love you in every corner of this world, and across every distance that separates us now. I will love you even if you lose faith in everything, even if you resent me for leaving, even if you curse the sky for taking too much. I will love you when you heal. I will love you when you begin again.
And if I could have stayed longer, I would have. If love were enough to keep a person alive, I would never have left. But I hope you know that my love did not end, it merely changed form. It became the morning air, the warmth that brushes past your shoulder, the quiet in your chest when you can finally breathe again. When the loneliness comes, look around, and I will be there somewhere. Not in the way you can touch, but in the way you can still feel. I will be there when light filters softly through the window, when your favorite song plays unexpectedly, when something sweet and familiar drifts through the air. That will be me, still loving you, still trying to reach you. I love you, Seulgi. I loved you then, I love you now, and I will continue to love you long after the world forgets our names. I will love you until the oceans dry, until the stars fade, until love itself loses all meaning. And even then, somehow, I will still find a way.
I thought I could hold on until New Year’s, at least, until the fireworks lit up your face and I could memorize the colors in your eyes one last time. But the body is cruelly honest in the end. It tells the truth even when the heart refuses to listen. You once asked me what I thought love was. I said I did not know. But now I think love is this, this unbearable wanting to stay, even when every part of me knows I cannot. It is the ache in my chest that whispers “one more day please”, even when the time has run out. It is writing letters like this, hoping that words can stand in for the warmth of a hand.
Seulgi, you are the love of my life. The first person who ever made me feel seen without needing to be perfect. You loved me in all my trembling, uncertain parts, the pieces I hid even from myself. And I think that is what saved me, even if it could not cure me. If there is something after this, if souls are real, if the universe keeps score, if love leaves an echo, I will find you again. Maybe not as this version of me, maybe not in this lifetime or this skin, but somewhere, I will recognize you. You will be the girl with the steady hands and the eyes that hold storms, and I will fall in love all over again.
Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I imagine the end of the world. The sun burning out, the sky folding in on itself, oceans rising. And still, in that last light, I see you. I think, even then, when everything has come undone, I will still love you. When the stars collapse, I will still remember the curve of your smile. When the air becomes too thin to breathe, I will remember the way your breath felt against my neck. When language breaks and all that is left are sounds, I will whisper your name into the nothing, just to hear it once more. If someday the world starts again, if time resets and life begins anew, I hope I find you sooner. I hope I am braver next time. I hope I do not waste a single day pretending that love needs permission to exist.
You once told me that love was not supposed to hurt. I think you were wrong, or maybe you were right, but in another way. Because this ache, this endless missing you, it is the most beautiful pain I have ever known. I would live it again, a thousand times over, if it meant one more morning of waking up beside you. I wish I could have grown old with you. I wish I could have seen what kind of person you would become, what kind of life we would build. I wish I could have laughed with you in our kitchen at seventy, argued about whose turn it was to feed the cat, held your wrinkled hands and said “we made it.”
But life does not always wait for us to be ready. And I think, somehow, we already had everything. We had love that made time feel irrelevant. We had quiet mornings and shared coffee and songs that belonged only to us. We had forever, even if it did not last a lifetime. I’ve known for a while that something was wrong with me. The exhaustion wasn’t just from school or stress like I told you. There were days when breathing felt like climbing a hill barefoot, and nights when my heart stumbled in my chest. I didn’t tell you because I wanted to give you peace, just one more week, one more day, one more hour where we could pretend the world wasn’t slipping away from me.
You’ve always seen through me, though. Maybe you knew, even before I did. You have this way of looking at me like you already understand the things I’m too afraid to say. I think that’s why I fell for you. You made me feel transparent without feeling exposed. You looked at my cracked edges and called them beautiful. I wanted to give you something this Christmas that would last longer than I could. I couldn’t find the words when I looked at you, so I wrote them here instead. I wanted it to remind you that love doesn’t end where the body does. That even if I go, what we had doesn’t disappear. It stays, in the way you hum while you cook, in the way you reach for me in your sleep, in every quiet moment we built together. But that future isn’t ours, and I’m trying to make peace with that.
Please don’t hate me for keeping this from you. I just wanted one last Christmas with you, one last chance to pretend that everything was okay. I wanted to watch you smile under the lights, hear you hum along to those songs you always claim not to like, and feel your hands warm against mine. I wanted to memorize the shape of your face in the glow of the tree, so that if there’s something after this, I’ll still be able to find you.
And you also once told me that love is a kind of faith, not in gods, not in forever, but in the moments we choose to give to each other. I think you were right. Loving you has been the closest thing to faith I’ve ever known. You made me believe that maybe I wasn’t born just to disappear. That maybe, for a little while, I was meant to be loved, to be seen, to be known. And now that I’m leaving, I want you to promise me something. Keep living. Let the world touch you the way you let me. Laugh loudly, cry when you need to, fall in love again someday, even if it hurts to imagine it now. I want you to keep walking, even if I’m not beside you.
Because here’s the truth, I don’t think death ends anything. I think love lingers, in small, invisible ways. It’s in the way the first snow will always remind you of the night we danced outside the university, drunk on cheap wine and bad decisions. It’s in the quiet, when you think you’re alone and something inside you still feels held. That will be me, always.
If there’s a heaven, I’ll wait for you. If there isn’t, then I’ll become the sky that follows you, soft, endless, and full of memory. Maybe you’ll feel me in the wind brushing your hair, or in the way your favorite song plays when you least expect it. I’ll find a way to stay, even if it’s only in whispers. I’m not afraid anymore, Seulgi. Not because dying is easy, but because loving you made living worth it. Every heart beat I had was a note in the song you gave me, and I’ll keep humming it, wherever I go.
When you find this letter, hold it close for a while. Let yourself cry if you need to. Then, when the tears stop, look outside. See how the snow falls softly, how it doesn’t ask for anything, how it just keeps falling. That’s how my love will be. Quiet. Endless. Always finding its way back to you.
Thank you for everything, for every laugh, every kiss, every morning you pulled me closer without a word. Thank you for being the first person who ever made me feel real. If souls are made of light, then yours is the one that taught mine how to shine, and when mine goes out, I know it will still glow somewhere inside you.
If I could choose this life again, I would still choose you, every time.
With all that I am, and all that I’ll ever be,
Jaeyi