My Husband Kept a Christmas Gift from His First Love Unopened for 30 Years—Last Christmas, I Couldn’t Take It Anymore and Opened It

For years, I paid no attention to the small box beneath our Christmas tree. Memories don’t haunt you like that, despite my husband’s claim that it was only a recollection from his first love.

Something broke inside me last Christmas. When I unwrapped the gift, I discovered a secret that completely altered my life.

Tyler was 35 when we first met, and I was 32. It felt like fate, even though it sounds cliche. Our connection was as quick and electrifying as the first snowfall when you step outside. Everything was enchanted, glistening, and flawless.

His dry sense of humor made me giggle, and I like his quiet self-assurance. He was never arrogant or cocky. Tyler was a safe haven in a storm, calm and sure.

That’s what I thought, anyway. Later on, I saw that his composed manner was timidity rather than confidence.

We had the most amazing first Christmas together. Snow dusted the windows, candles glowed, and gentle music played. We unwrapped presents in shifts, scattering bows and ribbons on the floor. Then I noticed it.

There was still one present beneath the Christmas tree: a tiny, immaculately wrapped box with a bow that was a little flattened.”Oh?” I cocked my head in its direction. “Is that also for me?”

Tyler shook his head as he looked up from the sweatshirt I had just given him. “No, that’s something from my first love. She gave it to me prior to our breakup.

He dismissed it with a shrug. “Each year, I place it under the tree, though I’ve never opened it.”

I blinked. “What?”

He didn’t even raise his head. The sweatshirt was just folded across his lap. “It’s not a huge concern. It’s merely a remembrance of someone who was very important to me in the past.

A tingle ran up the back of my neck. “Why didn’t you open it?””I didn’t feel like opening it, and we broke up soon after,” he added.

At least he believed that the moment was gone.

However, I recall that while I sat there, my smile felt too forced. In the back of my mind, there was a tiny red signal, but I persuaded myself it was okay. People tend to hold onto strange items. old letters of love. Stubs of tickets. No one is flawless, are they?

As the years passed, we established a life together. After getting married, Tyler and I purchased a modest starter home. Together, our two children filled the rooms with toddler tears and shrieks of delight.

We were content. or busy, which can feel the same at times. Christmas arrived and departed on schedule.

Tyler would arrange the lights as I hung the tree. Every year, without fail, the little box would show up under the tree, and the children would quarrel over which ornaments belonged where.

Around the seventh year of our marriage, I questioned him about it once more.”Why do you still have that old gift?” I asked as I cleared the floor of pine needles. “You’ve had it longer than you’ve had me.”

His brow wrinkled as if I had just challenged him to find a solution for world peace, he looked up from untangling the lights.Nicole, it’s just a box. No one is harmed by it. Let it be.

I could have disagreed. I didn’t, even though I wanted to. I still thought that peace was more significant than solutions back then. I continued to have faith in us.

Time eluded us. Christmases passed by. When the children grew up, they went off to college. They avoided spending holidays with the family more frequently and made less and fewer phone calls.

I was surprised by how calm the house was. You never know how much noise you’ll miss, which is amusing.

However, that box? There was never a year it missed.

I used to see it materialize like a ghost every December. Tyler would position it such that it was visible yet out of the way. It was still wrapped in the same dumb paper that was just as silky as the day his first love did.

I stopped talking. I would simply watch it, feel my chest constrict, and carry on. However, something had changed.

The box was no longer merely a box. It was all that we didn’t say to one another. On the nights when I stayed up wondering if he had ever loved me as much as she did, it was his quiet.

I once stood in the kitchen, hands on my hips, staring at the ceiling as if it owed me an explanation, after putting away the leftovers from dinner.

Tyler still hadn’t taken out the garbage or cleaned the dishes as he had promised. As usual, I kept everything together while he was upstairs clicking away on his laptop.

I was sick of constantly arguing with him and reminding him to do things because I had dedicated years of my life to this man and our family. My heart ached for something I couldn’t identify as I glanced about our kitchen.

With a sigh, I wiped my hands on a dishtowel and headed toward the living room.

Everything was bathed in a warm, golden glow as the Christmas tree lights quietly twinkled. It ought to have been quiet. Then I noticed that damn box, though.

It was smugly sitting there, unharmed. After all these years, it is still unopened.

In my chest, something sharp and deep unfolded. I could have left. I should have, but I had already turned away too many times.

Before I could think, I snatched it from the floor and ripped it open. That dumb, flattened bow dropped to the ground as the paper tore in my hands. As I ripped apart the thin cardboard and unwrapped Tyler’s first love’s gift, my breath came quickly and sharply.

There was a letter inside, carefully folded and soft yellow with age. I froze.

He has been protecting this for thirty years. With shaky fingers, I unfolded the page while my heart pounded in my ears.

As soon as I read the first sentence, my stomach fell. My knees weakened as I staggered backward and sat firmly on the couch.I’m pregnant, Tyler. I realize this is shocking, but I had nowhere else to go. I’m being forced to avoid you by my parents once they learned, but if you meet me at the bus stop on the 22nd, we can flee together. I’ll have a green coat on.

Tyler, please meet me there. I sincerely apologize for lying to you on the day of our breakup. From the automobile, my father was observing. I still love you.

To stop myself from making a sound, I put my fist to my mouth.

She had been present. She had been waiting for him. And he didn’t appear. Even worse, he had never even read the letter. He was clueless.

Tyler’s footsteps sounded as he descended the stairs. I made no attempt to conceal my actions.

His face became white when he spotted me carrying the letter.”What did you do?” His voice was piercing, like glass cutting through the atmosphere. “That was my most precious memory!”

I slowly got up and turned to face him as I felt a huge opening in my gut.I raised the letter like a war flag and asked, “Memory?” “You mean this? You never even opened this letter? Are you saying that you held onto this “memory” for thirty years without even having the guts to recognize what it was?

He stepped back as if I had struck him and blinked.”I didn’t,” he said, pausing and wiping his face. “I was scared, okay?”I snarled, “Coward,” and stabbed him with the letter as if it were a sword.

His eyes grew wide. After what seemed like an eternity of standing like that, he grabbed the page in his hands and read the letter.

As I watched him settle down on the sofa’s arm and gasp in disbelief, my eyes didn’t even sting with tears. Now I was too exhausted for it.

His face was filled with emotions, and he once moaned softly. Before lowering his head into his hands, he appeared to have read her words at least three times.She was waiting, and I failed to appear.” His speech was full of emotion, and his shoulders trembled.

There was a dense, oppressive silence between us. Like a man lamenting his own death, he sobbed. I didn’t feel sorry for him, though. I had also been waiting.

“Tyler,” I answered, sounding as composed as a quiet lake following a storm. “I’m worn out. I’m sick of being a ghost’s second.My heart began to stabilize. “We’re done.”

I exited the room without his pursuing me.

It was a peaceful divorce. We didn’t have the energy to muck things up. The remainder of our lives, the house, and the automobiles were divided.

He located her. Our youngest told me. Their son had no interest in meeting Tyler or his half-siblings, and she was contentedly married. Twice, he had lost his opportunity.

And me? I have a place of my own. I sat by the window on Christmas Eve, taking in the gentle glow of the lights coming from the apartments next door.

This year, there were no boxes, no ghosts, and no tree. Just tranquility.