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THEHUMAN DIARYThere is a word for what you felt.
Regret

n.A message written in full, reread, and never sent — which changes you anyway.

The Human Diary editorial term

The Message That Stayed

It had been in the drafts folder for two years and four months, and Anand had read it enough times to have it by heart, which was how he knew it was good.

That was the trouble. It was the best thing he had ever written. Nine hundred words, no self-pity in it, no accusation, nothing that could be quoted back at him in a bad light. It said the thing. It said the thing so precisely that reading it still gave him the small internal lurch of a diagnosis being confirmed.

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