The Last Letter

by Rebecca Yarros

“Sometimes you have to leave so you can know what it is you left. You don’t really value something until you’ve lost it.”

I’ll save you a seat on the other side, brother, but take your time. Take every single second you can. You are the only brother I would have wished for, and my very best friend. And just in case no one ever told you—you’re worthy. Of love. Of family. Of home.

You can’t over-drown a person. Once they’re underwater it doesn’t matter how much is above them if they can’t swim upward.

But I can tell you sometimes the losses are just as important as the wins. The wins feel really good and let us celebrate what we did right. But the losses, they teach us more. They teach us to see where we can improve, and yeah, they feel pretty darn bad, and that’s okay. As you get bigger, you’ll see that it’s not how you handle the wins that make you a good man, it’s how you handle the losses.”

But I didn’t know how to trust the appearance of sunshine after living in a perpetual hurricane. Not when there was the overwhelming possibility that he was simply the eye of the storm.

We are imperfect people made that way by an imperfect world, and we don’t always get a say in what shapes us. I do not blame you for Ryan. The only person who does, is you. And if you don’t let that pain go, it’s going to shape the rest of your life. You have that choice.”

“Because a very wise woman told me once that you can’t reason with the universe, no matter how sound your logic is. And that we can either breathe through the pain or we can let it shape us. So I’m sure that we’ll take it breath by breath until the ache lessens just a tiny bit.”