I don’t even know why I kept that letter. Maybe because it was the first time I admitted, in writing, that I wasn’t okay. It sits in a drawer under old receipts and a bus ticket from Lagos to Ibadan that I never used.
The letter was for Adaeze. Or maybe for myself, I can’t really tell anymore.
We met while we were in university, and she was one of those people who things were always bright and colourful for, regardless of circumstance. She always had people around her. I on the other hand, was the loneliest person ever, even when seated in a room with close to a thousand people. She liked to tease me about my seriousness. “Your forehead is always carrying the world,” she used to say. I’d laugh, though sometimes it annoyed me, because I didn’t know how to stop carrying it.
When she left for her Master’s in Canada, I thought distance wouldn’t matter. We had WhatsApp, late night calls, little voice notes that felt like cups of coffee across oceans. But then, her life moving faster than mine. She got a research assistant job, new friends, snow adventures. But I was stuck working in an office that smelled like old files and disappointment. it was a routine I couldn't escape, as I had no choice.
I picked up my pen and wrote that letter one night after another argument over the phone. She said I was always complaining. I don't know if I was. Maybe I was.
I stared into empty space for some time, then at the ceiling of my apartment. Heart, heavy, pen, bleeding, and began to write. I wondered if it was worth telling her how heavy things felt. But Instead of saying it, I simply wrote it.
"Dear Adaeze, I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a burden. Most days I feel like I’m failing in a race I didn’t sign up for. You’re out there, doing well, conquering stuff, and I’m here... just barely keeping my head above water. I’m scared that one day you’ll look at me and just see nothing worth holding. Nothing to stay for."
I ended up writing more than I planned, rambling about my father who barely says two words to me whenever I visit home, like I’m a stranger in his house. About the loans that keep piling up, too many zeros to think about, and how sometimes I just walk at night for hours, no destination, just walking so I don’t have to lie down and try to sleep. Because sleeping feels harder than being awake.
It was messy and not anything close to poetry. But it was the truest thing I’ve written in a long time.
I folded the letter and kept it somewhere safe. I didn't send it, neither did I ever talk about it. And Adaeze… Well, she stopped calling as much. Then one day, she didn’t call at all.
What if I had sent the letter? Maybe she would have understood, or maybe she would have left sooner. I’ll never know.
Life has a strange way of reminding you of what you’ve lost. Last week, I saw her on Instagram—yes, I still check sometimes though I shouldn’t. She was smiling beside a man who looked annoyingly confident, the type who wears success like cologne. They were holding a baby. I stared at the picture until my phone screen dimmed itself.
And now, I unfolded the letter for the first time after many years. My handwriting looked desperate, rushed. I almost laughed. Imagine sending that to her. Imagine her reading it and then going to a party in the snow with her new friends.
But here’s the strange part. Reading it now, I realized I wasn’t even writing to her. I was writing to myself. The words weren’t about us. They were about me. The burden I didn’t know how to speak aloud.
Maybe that’s what people mean when they talk about growth. Not the big dramatic transformations, but the quiet realization that you survived yourself.
I don’t hate Adaeze. I simply grateful to have met someone who made me believe the world could be lighter.
I still haven’t thrown the letter away. I guess a part of me thinks that I’ll need to read it again one day. To remind myself of where I came from. Or maybe because it feels like proof that I once cared enough to write at all.
And maybe that’s enough.