On the days I couldn't show up

Dear you,

I need you to know that every day I wasn’t there, I was still thinking of you.

There were days when my body made the decision for me. Days when getting vertical was a negotiation I lost before 9am. And on those days, the guilt was heavier than the exhaustion — which is saying something.

I want to explain something about chronic illness that nobody explains well: it doesn’t announce itself. There’s no cast, no visible wound, no moment where someone looks at you and understands immediately why you can’t be where you said you’d be. You just… aren’t there. And the people you love most have to fill in that blank themselves.

You filled it in generously. More generously than I deserved, and more than I ever told you.

I am writing these letters because some things don’t have a good moment to be said out loud. Because the right conditions — where I’m well enough, and present enough, and you’re ready to hear it — don’t always arrive. So I’m writing them down, for the version of you that will someday want to know what I was thinking on the days I went quiet.

I was thinking of you. Always you.

Love, Abba