At twenty-two, Maren and a close friend began drifting apart. Trying to preserve the relationship, she carried nearly all of the other person's feelings and treated every silence as a request for more patience. When the goodbye finally arrived, the long letter she had written remained unsent.
Later, Maren placed the envelope and a piece of sea glass together in an archive box. The experience never hardened into a lesson, but it left a quiet reminder: understanding another person does not require losing yourself.