a letter I didn't send

I wrote it in October, somewhere between the first draft and sending, decided not to. You were going through the thing you were going through and I wanted to say: I see it. Not fixing-it see it, not have-you-tried see it. Just — I can tell. And the specific difficulty of the thing you're in is not the generic difficulty of hard times, it's the specific difficulty of being you in this situation and I know both those things well enough to understand the difference. I didn't say any of this. What I said was shorter and more practical, which is what the moment seemed to need. Sometimes the letter you don't send is the truer one. Not because you shouldn't say things, but because you can't say them in the way you mean them, not in a format that could be received. I think you knew anyway. I think the thing I wanted to say was already between us and didn't need to be said. I still have the letter. I read it occasionally. It's honest in a way that makes it uncomfortable to look at. That seems right.