Happy birthday, Will Byers. I don’t really know how to write this without it feeling like I’m closing a door I’ve been living inside for years, but maybe that’s what this is. A quiet kind of goodbye. You were never just a character on a screen. You were the softest echo of being unseen and still choosing to love anyway. You taught me that silence isn’t emptiness, that there are whole galaxies inside the things we never say. The way you loved, so gently, so selflessly, like holding a candle in a storm just so someone else could see… it changed something in me.
I think that’s why it hurts. Because you stayed kind in a world that kept taking from you. Because you felt everything and still chose not to let it make you cruel. And because some loves, like yours, don’t get to be loud or returned or easy… they just exist, quietly, beautifully, and a little heartbreakingly.
So this is me, letting go. Of you, of this story, of this little space I carved out to feel everything a bit too deeply. Thank you for being my comfort, my ache, my reminder that softness is not weakness. Wherever stories go when they end, I hope you’re finally somewhere warm, somewhere seen, somewhere loved the way you always deserved.
Goodbye, Will. And thank you for everything. 🤍
