Hi. I’ve written and re-written that first sentence about a hundred times and I still can’t come up with anything better than hi. Hello, John. How are you doing, John? Everything was easier when I started my letters with Hi. You’ve always been better at this, putting pen to paper and I’ve always envied you for it. So again, hello John. Guess what I found? I found ‘Melrine’s mixtapes”! The “2010, 2011 and 2012” edition. The ‘album covers’ are still as hideous as the first time I saw it. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when I saw the CDs, how you’ve literally just coloured a piece of paper with highlighter pens – how you drafted the back cover with all the song names in pencil before inking in it because you wanted it to be perfect. Do you remember how I used to laugh and threaten to rewrite over the CDs, how I said I could make better use of the CD space with something a little less lame? Now I’m afraid of getting one scratch on it. I also found the letters you wrote. All of them are here and just as I remember it. Every scratch of pen, every crease, every thought. It’s all so cheesy, John. One letter has an inked outline of your hand “so you can hold my hand when I’m not there”, another has a (badly-drawn) perspective view of a box – you called it your kiss box. You told me that all your kisses were in there. I laughed so hard, John. Even now, it makes me laugh.

But it hurts to laugh. And I’m sorry, John. I’m so sorry. It’s so terribly selfish but I need you to please say something. You don’t deserve what I did to you and there’s no way I can possibly excuse what I did. I can’t even fathom how you put up with me for all these years. It must have been so exhausting, John, to have to keep asking me to come back to you. I was always so stubborn and every time, I thought I couldn’t come back, couldn’t do it anymore. Because it would be going back to leaving you. I’ve prepared myself to leave you for years. It took such a long time. And I don’t even know why. I was unhappy with my own life and I took it out on you, I wanted you to be just as miserable as I was. There’s something wrong with me, John. Something ugly...

You know, they say the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference. That’s what they tell me. They think it comforts me to think you don’t hate me, John. Do you hate me, John? Because I seriously doubt you love me. How could you, after everything? Please tell me, John. Because it makes me sick to the stomach thinking you could feel something worse than hate towards me. Please say something.