Dear Tessa, I think what’s bothering me the most now isn’t even what happened, it’s what I didn’t say. There were so many moments where something didn’t feel right, where I had questions, where I needed clarity, and I just stayed quiet. I didn’t want to come off as too [...]

Dear Tessa, I kept thinking that if I just gave a little more, things would change. If I showed up more, if I was more understanding, more patient, more consistent, that he would meet me there. I thought maybe he just needed to feel it more, to see it more, [...]

Dear Tessa, I don’t really understand why I do this, but every time something starts to feel real, I pull back. In the beginning, everything is easy. I’m present, I’m interested, I’m consistent. But as soon as it starts getting deeper, when there’s more emotion, more expectation, more connection, something [...]

Dear Tessa, I think I knew the whole time. Not everything, not all at once, but enough. Enough to feel it in the beginning, enough to question it in the middle, enough to recognize it before it ended. The inconsistency, the way things didn’t fully align, the way I kept [...]

Dear Tessa, I think the hardest part for me to admit is that I liked him more than he liked me. It wasn’t obvious at first. In the beginning, it felt mutual, or at least enough for me to believe it was. But over time, I started to feel the [...]

Dear Tessa, I stayed because I really believed it would get better. Not overnight, not perfectly, but enough to make it make sense. I saw the inconsistency, I felt the gaps, I noticed the things that didn’t fully align, but I kept telling myself it just needed time. I thought [...]