The rain hammered against the windowpane, a relentless rhythm mirroring the anxiety churning within me. This letter, carefully folded and resting on the worn oak desk, felt heavier than its paper weight suggested. It was a confession, a plea, a farewell – a tangled mess of emotions I struggled to articulate in my native tongue, let alone this foreign language, English.

I’d spent countless nights agonizing over each word, rewriting sentences until they bled into each other, searching for the precise nuance that would convey the depth of my feelings. The dictionary had become my constant companion, its pages dog-eared and annotated, a testament to my desperate attempt to bridge the gap between my heart and my words.

Why English, you might ask? Why not the familiar comfort of my mother tongue? Because English, in its stark simplicity, in its dispassionate clarity, offered a shield, a buffer. It allowed me to dissect my emotions, examine them under a sterile light, without the suffocating weight of history and sentimentality that clung to my own language. It was a way to speak the truth, or at least, my truth, with a clinical detachment that felt both liberating and terrifying.

The truth, as I understood it, was a fractured thing. It involved a silent observation of your life from afar. The way you laughed, the subtle tilt of your head when you concentrated, the unconscious habit of drumming your fingers on the table when you were deep in thought - these small, insignificant details had become my obsession. I built a world around them, a world that existed only in my imagination, a world where we were connected, where we understood each other without the need for words.

This world was built on a foundation of fantasy, I knew. And fantasies, like castles made of sand, were destined to crumble. The realization was slow, agonizing, like watching a glacier melt, inch by agonizing inch. The pain, sharp and unrelenting, forced me to confront the reality: that my feelings were unrequited, that my dreams were just that – dreams.

The letter itself was a journey. It began with tentative greetings, carefully chosen to avoid any hint of overfamiliarity. Then, it meandered through a tangled landscape of admiration and respect, never explicitly stating the truth, but hinting at it through veiled metaphors and oblique references. I wrote about your kindness, your intelligence, your unwavering dedication to your work. I painted a portrait of you as I saw you – a beacon of light in a world shrouded in darkness.

But the heart of the letter, the part that took the most courage to write, was the farewell. It was a slow, deliberate severing of ties, a gentle release of expectations. I wished you well, sincerely, hoping that you would find happiness and fulfillment in your own life, even if that life didn’t include me.

The English I used in this section was deliberately formal, almost cold. I wanted to create a distance, to make it clear that this was the end of the road, that there was no turning back. I avoided sentimental phrases, choosing instead neutral language that conveyed my intentions with clarity and precision. The goal was to minimize the emotional impact, to make the departure as painless as possible, both for you and for myself.

The act of writing this letter, of wrestling with the English language, was itself a cathartic experience. It forced me to confront my feelings, to examine them from all angles, to understand their roots and their consequences. It was a way of processing my emotions, of finding closure, of moving on.

As I reread the letter one last time, the rain outside began to subside. A sliver of sunlight pierced through the clouds, casting a warm glow on the desk. The letter, now sealed and addressed, felt lighter, less burdened. It was still a confession, a plea, a farewell, but it was also something more: a testament to the power of language, the ability of words, even in a foreign tongue, to express the deepest emotions of the human heart. The decision was made; the letter had to be sent. It was necessary to face the inevitable. Perhaps this was the first step towards acceptance, towards a future where the memory of you wouldn't cause pain, but a gentle sense of nostalgia. I hope you understand, someday, why it had to be said, in English.