Dear Someone: Some of us were taught to flinch when touched gently because love always came with a bruise, a silence, a goodbye.
An unspoken silence that whispers through the scars of every heartbeat I've ever trusted.
The letter you're about to read is adapted from my book Unspoken Silences—a raw, emotional archive of the things we often feel too deeply to say aloud. This one is especially for those whose hearts have learned to expect pain where love should be. Those who grew up believing hurt was the price of intimacy. Those whose hearts learned early that love arrives wearing thorns. Those who keep choosing people who mirror their scars. If you've ever confused survival with romance, or worn heartbreak like a second skin, this will feel achingly familiar. Keep reading—your pain deserves a new ending and your love doesn’t have to ache.
Dear, Dear Someone, _
Sometimes I wonder if I was born knowing how to hurt, or if love taught me its language of aches so gradually that I mistook the lessons for lullabies. My heart learned early to dance with daggers, to waltz with wounds that masqueraded as affection.
Each time I've opened my arms to love, pain has rushed in like an old friend coming home. It settles in my chest with familiar weight, reminding me that this is what I know, what I've always known. The pattern is so deeply etched in my being that I sometimes question if there's any other way.
When did I learn to equate love with pain, and why do I keep proving myself right?
You arrived like all the others, carrying promises wrapped in possibility, and my heart - ever the willing student - prepared itself for its usual education. How seamlessly you fit into the narrative I'd written long ago, where love and suffering share the same ink, the same breath, the same heartbeat.
I've become an expert at reading between the lines of every tender moment, searching for the hidden thorns I know must exist. My fingers have memorized the texture of impending pain, can trace its outline in even the gentlest touch. Is this what love was meant to be, or have I simply forgotten how to read its true language?
The geography of my heart is mapped in scars, each one a landmark of lessons learned too well. I navigate this terrain with practiced ease, knowing exactly where the land mines of hope lie buried beneath fields of possibility. Every step forward is both an act of courage and surrender.
Do you see how naturally I accept the hurt, how my shoulders don't even flinch anymore when the weight increases? I've learned to wear pain like a second skin, to breathe through the pressure until it becomes almost comfortable. The comfort in familiarity, even when that familiarity breeds deeper wounds.
My memories of love are tinted with the color of twilight - that space between light and dark where everything blurs into beautiful uncertainty. Each heartbeat carries the echo of previous hurts, yet still drums on with stubborn hope. How strange that I keep returning to this dance, knowing all the steps that lead to suffering.
Perhaps I've become too skilled at finding beauty in broken things, at turning wounds into windows through which I view the world. The poetry of pain flows easily from my pen, while the language of gentle love remains foreign on my tongue. When did I become so fluent in the dialect of heartache?
Time has taught me to expect the sting that follows sweetness, to brace for the fall that comes after every flight. Like a prophecy I fulfill with every breath, I've learned to seek out those who will confirm my deeply held belief that love and pain are inseparable twins.
The irony doesn't escape me - how in trying to protect myself from hurt, I've become its most faithful guardian. My heart, ever the loyal sentinel, stands ready at attention, waiting for the next lesson in this curriculum of care and catastrophe. The syllabus is written in scars and sighs.
Your presence in my life fits perfectly into this pattern, another chapter in my book of beautiful destruction. I recognized the familiar cadence of approaching storm in your gentlest whispers, saw the shadow of future pain in your brightest smiles. How well I played my part in this performance.
Sometimes I catch glimpses of a different kind of love - one that doesn't wear thorns as a crown, that doesn't require blood as proof of devotion. But these visions feel like mirages, too fragile to trust, too foreign to embrace. My heart knows its role too well to attempt a different script.
Each day I carry this weight, this understanding that my love comes pre-packaged with pain, sealed with sighs and stamped with scars. It's a legacy I've inherited, a prophecy I fulfill, a story I keep writing even as I long to tear out the pages and start anew.
Forever learning love's hardest lessons,
—Ali Papa.
Author of Letters of Woe and an ever-growing library of books
Conveyor of the Vistas of Hope Newsletter
Shepherd of Wayward Wanderer
—Sacred Silences:
Dear God,
I come before You today with a heart that's grown too familiar with hurt, a soul that's learned to expect thorns with every rose. I've forgotten, Lord, that love was meant to heal, not harm - to lift up, not weigh down. Help me unlearn these lessons that have twisted Your greatest gift into something that bleeds.
Creator of all comfort, I ask for the courage to imagine a different kind of love. My heart has become so accustomed to pain that gentleness feels like a foreign language. Guide my steps toward a new understanding, where love doesn't demand suffering as proof of its authenticity. Show me how to recognize true affection without searching for the hidden hooks I've come to expect.
Merciful Father, as I stand at this crossroads between what I've known and what could be, grant me the wisdom to choose a different path. Help me see that my worth isn't measured by how much pain I can endure, but by how much love I deserve to receive. Teach me to love without anticipating hurt, to trust without expecting betrayal, to hope without bracing for disappointment. Let me learn anew what Your perfect love truly means.
Amen!
Some stories aren’t shouted—they’re whispered in journals, buried in memory, or cried into pillows late at night. Unspoken Silences is a collection of those kinds of stories.
If you've ever mistaken pain for passion, or thought being hurt was just the cost of being loved, this book will feel like it was written from your own bones.
I invite you to sit with these letters. Let them speak where you’ve been silent. Let them hold what you've never said and may you learn that the bruises on your heart were never meant to be love's signature.
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