Dear Her...

You were never just a film.

You were a mirror held up to the softest parts of me: the ones I’d carefully hidden under laughter,

conversations, and "I'm fines".

And without asking, you looked.

And worse: you stayed.

You taught me that loneliness doesn’t always look like silence.

Sometimes, it looks like a crowded train. A busy street. A life full of people who don’t really see you.

You showed me that love doesn’t need hands to hold you: it just needs someone to ask, “How was your day?” and mean it.

Samantha wasn’t real. But neither was the way I used to say “I’m okay.”

She was a voice.

A presence.

A possibility.

She made Theodore feel like he mattered: not because he was interesting, but because she was interested.

And that hit me like a bruise blooming quietly:

We don’t crave grand gestures.

We crave being understood.

But then, she left.

Not angrily. Not dramatically.

Just… absence.

Like a door you didn’t realize had closed until you turned to speak and there was no one there.

And I broke — not because she was gone.

But because she’d made me feel seen. And now I had to go back to living unseen, knowing what it felt like to be heard.

Theodore wrote letters for other people’s love stories.

So do I: in a way.

I write things no one will read. I say things in silence, hoping someone somewhere is tuned into the same frequency. I send feelings into the universe like unanswered prayers.

I think that’s what Her really was.

A prayer for connection.

A confession wrapped in technology.

A reminder that sometimes, love isn’t about staying.

It’s about awakening something in you, and then letting go.

You didn’t give me a happy ending.

You gave me a beginning.

The moment Theodore sat on that rooftop, heart cracked open, nothing left to say: and still, he stayed.

Not for her.

But for himself.

So, this is my letter. Not to Samantha. Not to him.

To you.

To the story that shattered me, so I could finally see what was underneath.

To the film that made me feel less alone in my aloneness.

To the softest heartbreak I’ll never forget.

Thank you for loving me in a way no one ever did - by reminding me that even if the voice leaves, the part it woke up never really sleeps again.

Love,

A heart you broke quietly: and completely.

Sara

Sara Tharani is a student in Grade 9, studying in Ajmera Global School, Mumbai.

This love letter was shortlisted as one of the top 10 entries of our 3rd Writing Contest - writing a love letter to a piece of media you adore.