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Mika,
I’m sorry. I’m sorry for taking this long to give you the words — the closure — that you deserved after all these years. I’m sorry for putting you through what you’ve been through.
And I’m sorry that I don’t feel as contrite as I know you wish I would be.
You will hate me for saying this to you now, Mikasa. But I promise you that (not now — not even in the next ten or twenty years — but eventually) you will be okay.
Let me be clear: you will not be without pain. I can’t lie to you (even though I wish I could comfort you with blatant deceit). But the truth is, Mikasa, that even now — decades later — it still hurts.
There are days when I still remember how his hands felt on my waist, in my hair (on our waist, in our hair). Those ghost sensations, eventually, travel upward and crush my (our) windpipe, crush my heart (our bruised and bedraggled heart). I know that you’re intimate with these feelings — I know it’s what you experience when you wake, until you fall into a fitful sleep.
In truth, there have been moments — even now, even a couple decades later — when I still consider if I would change anything. That, if I had the means to go back in time and tell you no, don’t go with Sasha or no, stay in your room tonight, would I do it?
I know that, if you were to refuse Sasha’s invitation to go to the convenience store that day, or if you just put your headphones and a movie and ignored the ruckus downstairs, you wouldn’t be hurting right now. You would be spared this sensation of feeling like your core has been hollowed.
But, Mika, I would not change what you — we — went through.
I know that he wasn’t just any boy to you. To us. He couldn’t have been.
Maybe I’m selfish now. Selfish because everything is always clearer in hindsight, and now — just now — I recognize how he and those brief moments in our shared springtime have helped form you into someone new. Someone stronger. Someone freer.
Selfishness isn’t necessarily a bad thing, Mikasa. And, selfishly, if given the chance to do this all over and spare you (us) the pain, I would refuse.
He made you better. I selfishly cannot spare you from that.
But the harsh truth: you were never meant to be Eren’s Mikasa forever.
I know it’s unimaginable right now — and I know I’m not making sense to you. But you will find new love. With someone else. Within you. With the children you co-create with the next great love of your life.
And you will be okay. You — we — will eventually learn to survive.
The pain never goes away, Mikasa, but it becomes dull and bearable. Inconveniently resurgent at the worst times — in our deepest sleeps, when we sit across the dinner table from our husband and our children, when we drive down the streets of Trost and think what if — but the pain recedes.
It simmers under our skin. Just the way he did when we were young and enamored and, admittedly, foolish.
But we always manage it. We keep moving forward. And we keep him there, buried, our painful little secret.
Embrace the hurt, Mika. And know that I will be here waiting for you.
With love,
Mikasa