Notes I Never Gave Him

On Fiction, Memory, and the Need to Be Seen

After finishing two stories—Folded Small and Where the Colour Lives—I found myself asking a question I hadn’t expected:

Am I writing about the same boy?

They didn’t seem connected at first. Different settings. Different lives. But something about them stayed with me—boys who noticed more than they said. Who shrank at the edges. Who felt the wrongness of things without knowing how to name it.

The question lingered. And beneath it, another surfaced:

Am I writing about myself?

Not directly. But from somewhere true.
From memory. From feeling.
From a long-held need to be seen.

This essay is my way of tracing that line—between fiction and self, between what was missing and what’s being offered now. A way of seeing the boy I once was, and letting him know: I haven’t looked away.

Notes I Never Gave Him

They appear fully formed, those boys.
I think I’ve made them up—until I realize I haven’t.

They’re boys who watch more than they speak. Who save biscuits like secrets and press drawings under fridge magnets. They try to be gentle in a world that hasn’t given them the tools for it.

And I recognize them. Not as versions of me exactly—but as echoes. Fractals. Kaleidoscopic images of the boy I once was.

Maybe you’ve known a boy like this. Or been one.

The kind who carries his hopes in silence, turning them into rituals only he understands.

They arrive in story after story—not by conscious design, but by gravitational pull. I’ve come to see: I don’t just imagine their world. I’m revisiting mine.

At first, I thought I was writing about them.
But now I know—I’ve been writing from me.

Folded Small came first. A boy shrinking at the edges. A chipped mug. A teacher who doesn’t ask questions he can’t yet answer. She notices how he peels labels, piles scraps, disappears into himself. And she doesn’t try to pull him out. Instead, she stays close to the quiet. Writes him notes she never gives. Folds them small. Places them in a drawer already good at keeping secrets. And then she steps out, leaving space—not for a breakthrough, but for breath.

Where the Colour Lives followed. A boy drawing suns in the dark. Saving foil-wrapped biscuits. Listening to his mother cry through the bathroom door. A fridge humming. A moon with its eyes closed. One morning, he finds his drawing—creased, smoothed, held in place with Blu-Tack. Not discarded. Not ignored. Seen.

I didn’t plan that story. It arrived in fragments—like memory sometimes does. Like turning a kaleidoscope and seeing a new pattern made from pieces you’ve already seen.

Together, these boys showed me something I hadn’t named yet.

They are older than their years in all the ways that don’t show up on paper.
Navigating the absence of adults with small, childlike rituals.
They don’t yet have the language for what’s wrong—but they feel the wrongness, like a draught that keeps finding its way in. And they respond not with explanation, but with presence.

They retreat to their own inner worlds, reinserting details that have slipped from the real one.
Sit beside silences, instead of rushing to fill them.

They receive gestures not always meant to be seen—notes folded quietly, a sandwich passed with just enough touch to feel. They hold these moments close. They learn how love can arrive softly.

They don’t yet know the why. But we, looking back, begin to.

As readers, we get to see what they can’t: the quiet bravery of their noticing, the weight of what isn’t said. And in seeing that, maybe we remember our own silences, too.
Maybe we carry our own folded notes—things we needed to hear but never did.

I wasn’t setting out to fictionalize my childhood. These aren’t autobiographical accounts. But they are emotionally true.

They live in the same spaces I once did—the quiet confusion of knowing something is off, but not having the words to name it. The ache of shrinking to fit. The solace of finding stability in repetition. The courage to hope someone might notice.

As a child, I asked “why” long before I had answers.

Why was my mum emotionally distant?
Why was I kept at arm’s length by other kids?
Why was I bullied?
Why did the world sometimes feel like it wasn’t built for boys like me?

I didn’t write back then.
But I watched. I listened. I made sense of things in silence.

Now, I write.

And when these boys appear, I give them what I didn’t have: recognition. Protection. A gentle kind of witnessing.

Not to rescue them—but to say: I see you. I know this isn’t your fault. I know you’re doing your best with what you’ve been given.

Writing has become a way not to relive what hurt, but to reframe it.
To hold it gently.
To let it go.

I think about the people who did show up for me—my dad, my godmother, my cousin.
Their care arrived quietly, without fanfare. But it landed. It stayed.

That’s what I try to write now.

Not solutions. Not resolutions.

Just presence.
Just enough steadiness.
Just enough love—imperfect, but real—to hold the silence differently this time.

When I write these stories, I’m not imagining a better childhood. I’m remembering what helped. I’m noticing what held.

And I’m offering it again—this time with intention.

For myself.
And for anyone else still looking for a version of that care.

That kaleidoscope still turns—
each new pattern catching light in a way the last one didn’t.
And with each shift, I see a little more—
not just of the boys, but of myself.
What shaped me.
What stayed.
What I needed, even when I didn’t yet know how to ask.

Just presence.
Just enough steadiness.
Just enough love—imperfect, but real—to hold the silence differently this time.

And maybe one day, he’ll read the note he never knew was waiting. And know it was always for him.