LOVE LETTERS NEVER SENT

There is something so profoundly girlhood about writing love letters you’ll never send.

Romanticizing people who barely know you exist; Feeling everything with embarrassing sincerity.; Believing that love deserves poetry — that feelings deserve paper, and that maybe someone could be worth your neatest handwriting.

Somewhere along the way, we became too practical for that.

We traded handwritten letters for doomscrolling, love letters for dating apps, butterflies for situationships — we even invented a word to make almost-love sound less heartbreaking.

Maybe that’s just growing up. Or maybe we’ve simply become afraid of feeling too much: afraid of looking foolish.

So we stop writing letters, we stop wearing pink.We stop believing softness is something adults are allowed to keep. We learn to protect ourselves instead.

And maybe we have to. At least I did.

***

When I finished crocheting this bag, I wore my pastel lavender heels for the first time in four years.

They’re delicate, elegant, light, chic.

The reason I hadn’t worn them wasn’t because I stopped loving them, it was because softness had disappeared from my life.

I needed to become tougher, stronger, stricter. I needed all of it to survive.

Little by little, everything soft started to feel unnecessary, as if there was no longer room for it.

As if becoming an adult meant leaving behind pink, bows, pearls, heels…

Leaving behind girlhood itself.

I bought those high heels when I was a university student. That was also when I got my nails done for the very first time — pastel pink. And after years of keeping my hair cropped short, almost boyish, I finally grew it long.

For a little while, femininity felt effortless. Then life happened.

And somewhere along the way, I realized that one of the first things we sacrifice when we’re trying to survive is softness.

Because we begin to believe softness makes us look less capable, less resilient, less worthy of being taken seriously.

What a tragedy it is to mistake guardedness for growing up.

Because it takes courage to remain soft.

To yearn, to hope, to love without irony, to write love letters you’ll never send, to believe someone could be worth your neatest handwriting, to choose pearls, ribbons, pastel heels, tenderness.

In a world that keeps rewarding sharp edges, to still be the little girl who dreams of castles, fancy dresses, and impossible things.

This bag is my love letter to her. This time, sent through the yarn.

And maybe, if you’ve forgotten her too, it’s yours as well.

It takes courage to stay soft.

Be soft, kid. Please never stop being soft.