Prologue - Live for Me

If you're reading this, you may have lost someone. Or maybe you've lost yourself. Perhaps you're trying to find answers that don't come, or trying to hold on when the world seems to crumble without warning. If that's the case, I understand. And you're in the right place.

For a long time, I believed that writing this book would be my way of saying goodbye. That leaving words on the page would allow me to release what life, cruelly, had taken from me. But I was wrong. This is not a farewell. It's a promise.

Losing the love of my life, Tom, was like losing air, light, and sound all at once. But amid the tears, amid the absence that hurt like a silent scream, I found something more. Through his letters, his recordings, his gestures that seemed to leave clues for me even after his departure, I discovered that love doesn't end. It stays alive, like a small flame that refuses to be extinguished.

Today, I am here. Whole. Not unscathed, but alive.

This book is not only for him. It's for you. For those who love, for those who lose, for those who remember, for those who continue. It's a bridge between what was and what could be. Between those who have gone... and those of us still here.

To Tom, I promised to live for him. But I learned that it wasn't about surviving bound to his shadow, but about living for me, too. Laughing with guilt at first, and with joy later. Falling in love with the sunrises again. Moving to Italy and finding myself in every corner we once dreamed of. Writing these pages as if they were a hand reaching out in the midst of darkness.

And if you're reading this now... then the promise continues.

Thank you for being here.

—Olivia