letter writer

How long can you go building a scream, keeping it quiet, without something cracking, breaking, self-destructing? Have some hours to put it all back together. Many years and a few hours, and everything changed and what was defiance became rage and what was unease became bitterness and what was uncertainty became your drive. There is quiet where there was loud expression, there is a facade where there was honesty, there is anger where there was hurt, there is a plan where there is helplessness, there is a promise where there was resignation, there you are, all broken up all of a sudden, and yet better than ever as far as anyone else is concerned. Go. Be better than ever.

You could chase them all the way to your own end if only someone said you’d barely begun – you could prove everyone wrong if only they told you you’d never. You could make everyone wrong solely because you want to, only a head on your shoulders and cynicism in your blood. You’d do it, too. If you care enough. It’s hard to shut you up when there’s irritation propping you up and nonsense to confront. It’s not much of a conversation, per se, you talk too much and everyone else will just let you. They’re not good at listening, so it turns out they’re not good at speaking either. It’s okay, though, you can speak for ten people by yourself. Eventually you’ll shut up. Did you burn yourself out or did you just finish saying your piece? Who knows? No one but you – you’re a one-person chase and no one will watch it. If you keep running, though, I promise – you’ll eventually end up at a better stage.

How fragile these things you rely on must be, how broken were they already, when are you clever enough to see the cracks? When can you safely start hiding your own, when can you safely start cracking yourself? And, in the midst of all this crumbling, when are you strong enough to be relied upon? There are all these foundations, blocks dropped and stacked and uneven and precarious and so different and unfairly unequal. And all this mess, this pile of nothing, is everything and made to work. So inconsistent and so imperfect and it works because you are here. You made it this far, and so did everyone else, or at least they made sure you were. History is really just an unbroken string of too many people pushing each other generally in the right direction. You think. This is probably the right direction. It's as though this were conceived by a handful of toddlers promptly forgetting whatever they do as soon as it gets done. One tells you how to say this word, the other how to sing that feeling, and they all know something and it means nothing except for whatever it is that they imagine it means. But you have it in your hands now, everyone here with you does too, and even though you’re not quite sure what all these blocks of what toddlers know are doing there, they make sure you have solid ground to stand on. It works. You don’t know how. You just need to hurry with making another block, someone else needs to stand on it.

How do you contrast your aspirations and everyone else’s expectations with your idea of fairness and merit? Who are you to have the inspiration and attention and whatever positive assessments people make of you? Whatever you build and accomplish, how much importance can you award it? Is it really enough for what you’re aiming for? Why aren’t you doing more? You want to impress people, but that seems like a whole lot of responsibility and self-importance. So do you keep going? But - if you can always be better, who's going to tell you when and if you get to the top? Unless that's not the point, in which case you don't understand achievements at all. Comparisons don’t work because no one ever said a value that comes from the relationship between two other values could reliably serve a third measurement. So then what exactly are you worth? A lot. You’re here, right? There’s no one like you and there’s no one who can do things the way you do them. That is enough. No one thinks like you. Tell everyone. Show me how you think. Show everyone. We’re all waiting for something new, and you can definitely be something new. You don’t need to prove that to anyone because it was proven with the idea of your existence.

Objectiveness is hard. The mind is the most precise instrument that we can't use to measure anything tangible with. Can you imagine all this power of rationale – put to use without hormonal, sensory restrictions and distractions – the kind of progress to be made out of just one unbiased brain. The possibility of subjective analysis, never missing a detail you know is important, never forgetting or glitching on mechanical, repetitive endeavors. All this potential – and its only purpose is to manage our insignificant short lives. But it has built things, even with its limitations – the modern world is a living, complex web of systems and infrastructures that, while deeply flawed, work well enough that people can lead happy, fulfilling lives in the right circumstances. It’s fascinating to observe what’s been built by so many of these instruments, every last one with expiration dates and a million other duties – personal, romantic, parental, whatever else lives are made of. All this capacity for creation, even if we mostly create in our own minds – it can be wasted and forgotten so easily, but it will always be so important to at least one person, even if that person is you alone. It’s enough. It has to be – not much else has so much meaning.

You know no one is alike and you know the weight of difficulties and privilege. You know everyone usually has their own combination of the two, and sometimes, they’re balanced in such a way that life isn’t something to get through. You also know, in your memories and experiences and nostalgia and sadness, that some people have parents, some people don’t, some wish they did, some wish they don’t, and that people are all different in the lives they’ve lived and the lives they make others live. So there is a little boy, and he does have a father, and he does have a mother. But – sometimes – he wishes he had only a mother and other times he wishes he had a father. And other times he just wishes he didn’t want to have someone at all. Because people are all different and some of them decide, for some reason, to not be their best self. He cares about his father in a strange way where he cares more about the idea of him than him himself because he knows he is not that good of a person. Besides, it’s hard to care about someone whose idea of care isn’t clear enough to discern whether they care about you too. One day, this little boy will no longer be little, and it will be hard to think that he needs his father in his life, because he’s never needed him before. And if it doesn’t make a difference to this little boy, then what of his father? I told you about a beaten down young boy with his life ahead of him and an embittered man too full of pride to be a part of it. So whose sad story is it?

It can be hard to know how and what to feel when you’re saying goodbye knowing it’s the last time – there’s some strange sort of grief, you suppose, even though you can’t really miss it yet, you’re still saying goodbye – but what if it’s a goodbye that’s coming from a change in your life? Changes have their own inherent feelings – dread, anticipation, even glee – and knowing you’re doing something is as bittersweet as it is something that compels you to enjoy it properly now because you’ll never get to do it again. So it’s either hard or an even mix of emotions that ultimately don’t tip the scales enough to be good or bad – it just happens and your life keeps going, full of new experiences and differences – you just keep learning. Goodbyes keep happening and you keep having to deal with them, so the best thing you can do is make sure someone remembers you saying goodbye. Don’t be irrelevant, and changes can only mean more things to get out of life to make yours richer. If someone can be a part of your memories, you can be a part of theirs too – always in a good way. It's much easier to make someone smile than it is to make someone cry, but it's much harder to put effort into the first than the second. You know you can put in the effort.

You retreat inside your own head a lot. Sometimes because you need to recharge, sometimes because you need to really think about something and you can’t let the world interfere, sometimes just because you’re in that kind of mood. It’s jarring to have this interrupted, because you momentarily forget society and how to deal with it, and because to go from inside your own mind to whatever bright, loud, disruptive environment you somehow ended up in feels a lot like culture shock. You blankly stare at whoever is trying to get your attention, trying to hold on to your train of thought and answer them at the same time, and everyone ends up frustrated. You know it’s important to not forget your surroundings, but your interest dwindles with every new person who says nothing new, the space that is the same as the thousands others you’ve visited, the everlasting sameness of the world. It makes you numb to the same changes going around you and your mind entertains itself – until you snap out of it because something new has happened again and you need to apply the correct response and it’s all so very exhausting. But the world is important, and so are people. Sometimes they don’t understand the alone time you need, and it’s upsetting, but people will be people and you don’t want them all to understand the same thing – how much often would you need to retreat into yourself then? Plus, you’ll find there are people worth coming out for – don’t stay in there all day. There are things to learn outside you can’t imagine by yourself.

Some people understand you, and some people don’t need to understand you to understand, and which is better, really? Which would you need? Or want? Someone who looks at you and knows everything without studying, someone who looks at you and knows nothing but knows how to learn it. The one that’s just like you and could almost communicate an entire page of things right off the bat, like you’ve known them all your life – and the one who couldn’t be more unlike you – fascinating – but puts so much time and effort into learning you, they’d know the whole book because they’ve locked onto your particular brand of weird and want nothing more than know all about it. You’d like both, wouldn’t you? Someone you don’t need to talk to, someone you could talk to for days. They’re so different but you can’t properly explain how, because there’s a sort of unspoken understanding that’s present in both. One lets you explore what you know even further, the other lets you find new things. A bunch of experiences that seem opposite but end up becoming the same thing in the end. Hopefully you’ll try them all.

To call anyone’s traits inherent is a gross inaccuracy. It’s hard to define human and right and it’s hard to define wrong and evil, and spending time struggling with that is pointless. ‘Should’ and ‘could’ are not synonyms, nor are they antonyms. If fake smooths life over, then it’s a part of it – it doesn’t compromise or erase who you are under whatever thousand labels you’re protecting yourself with. But then, who are you, really? Is it what you do, what you think? There you go again with definitions. It’s not very easy. Definitions work for things that were created with the definitions themselves in mind – if you’re just a product of chance, maybe what you are isn’t something people completely understand. Maybe it’s something not even you understand. Maybe no one needs to. You really know better – you’re a combination of a thousand little things and to understand you, someone would have to at least understand a few hundreds of them. When no one bothers, though – when someone takes a couple of them and chooses what are essentially arbitrary but somehow corresponding boxes to shove you in – it takes the interest out of you, doesn’t it? You’re known, what else is there to see? I don’t know you. Do I? I try. I don’t know when it’ll be enough, but I promise to never stop.

There are things that build up. Motivation, self-confidence, self-hatred, other people’s hatred. It’s easy to pretend not to care – it’s even easier to forget, if there are dozens of little things to notice every day. It can be forgotten, but not really. Because you’ll let it slide right off like water but catch and lock it all tight somewhere when no one’s looking, and you’d never dream of letting it go. It’s confusing and upsetting that there are people who feel the need to demean and bring down others – their reasons don’t even really matter. You balk at the idea of being less than overtly friendly so that no one gets the idea that there’s something wrong – it’s probably why there are so many things locked tight somewhere to gnaw at you when you need them least. Logically, if you focus on your own well-being, this doesn’t make a lot of sense – if you focus on everyone else, it does. It’s important to keep everything well-balanced – sometimes, there’s unnecessary weight that needs to be discarded – old, hovering feelings that serve only to tip the scales. Anger has its importance and place and use, but genuine indifference matters more, sometimes. You can’t fester endlessly in your own restless pool of resentment that matters more to you than whoever deserves it and enjoys it. You can get out, keep going, and leave them there.

Someone looks at you and you can see it all reflected in their eyes, a million little things they would change – sometimes it really does become a question of wishing they were looking at someone else entirely. But all they want is to fix you, and sometimes you even wish you could help them – you’re not really sure where to start, though. Too many people want to fix you. Too many people disagree where and how you should be fixed. Just that you should. So you stop. It’s exhausting. You give up. It’s too much effort just to be a person. It’s cool. Giving up is deciding to wait for the day you get to see eyes who know straight away you don’t need fixing. That day you’ll look in the mirror and finally see them without anyone else’s words in between. Or you could keep fighting. Every day you can tell them they’re wrong and argue and insult back, but in your head you think you know that you know they’re right. They’re not in your head, though. It’s just you on both sides of the battle, so who loses? One day, the voices will die down. They’ll tire, they’ll die, they’ll move on, they’ll change their minds, they’ll become white noise. It’ll happen, nothing lasts forever. Except what you choose to keep with you. I promise there are more important things to keep.

Do you sometimes wrestle with some inherently evil part of you – are you just faking all your external acts of kindness? How human are you? Can you spend your life lying and still call yourself the good guy in your story? Maybe you’re not even the right person to judge how warranted everyone else’s judgement is. What if they’re not the short-sighted ones? Stop. This is less about what you and everyone else is thinking than it is about what you and everyone else is thinking about what you could be thinking. Which doesn’t seem to have any logical point other than social engagement. Which, could be argued, has no point in itself. But that’s not the problem. The problem is whatever negative connotation comes from being a thinking being with naturally self-absorbed inclinations. I could point out that being concerned with that dispels your evilness – but you know that’s a weak defense. Truthfully, there probably is no defense. Everyone’s had thoughts they’re not proud of – curiosity and imagination are a powerful combo. But morbid curiosity is a thing – it doesn’t make you a bad person to only have bad thoughts - and I could argue what does make you a good person is being aware of bad thoughts, but striving to act on the good ones.

It turns out you spend a lot of time analyzing who you’re perceived to be (by everyone else and by yourself too). Which is something that hardly seems simple and well-defined enough for your comprehension. Other people have an easier time of it, even: when they’re reducing you to whatever will turn your complexities into labels of easy consumption, they’re not aware of whatever complexities you’re struggling with. You have a lot more hidden data to label, it’s harder. So, the point is probably that everyone is short-sighted because no one can really claim they see things as they are or that they see things as someone else sees them. Including you. The culmination of billions of genetic experiments, the product of a long and fascinating string of evolutionary wonder – it’s not sensible to try and smooth over whatever differences you and anyone else have so that blurring groups of people together is possible. No one is you and nothing about you should ever be made about anyone else. It’s not a label, it’s something about you. It can’t be explained away.

I am a writer, you are my character. I could paint you a million different colors, and then a million more. Would that make you two million different characters? My brush could be dark – enough to make you a color, a danger and a target all at once (and nothing else?) – but it could be white and change nothing much at all. You’d be as good as an unpainted character, undefined, waiting for more relevant colors so that proper assumptions can be built. It could also be more complex than a color– it could make you something people don’t really understand or care to (interesting or weird, plain or normal?), it could make you your own character or everyone else’s. It could be the difference to weird out people who complain of their world’s sameness. Maybe I could paint you as the reflection in someone's mirror - a person, you’d imagine, with a thousand labels or none. Maybe that way, someone might one day pick you out as a person out of all the colors.

Today you went outside and got in a crowd of people just like you. Not like you. They have different lives and experiences. Should they matter to you? Should it matter if they matter to you? Which ones are heroes, which ones are villains? Which ones would be confused by you, the things you know? Which ones know things that would confuse you? Which ones could matter if you said hello? You won’t, hellos are strangely scary. But then, you’d really just like to know sometimes. Who saved someone today? Who ruined someone today? Who’s a hero, who’s important, who’s both? What if they all are? Everyone’s got to be a hero at least once in their lifetimes, if only because of a kind word, a smile, a lifetime of both. Villains, though – what a thought, to understand them. Something in the way they know things must be different, surely? Maybe. How many people have made you their villain, though? Morals are tricky, how are you supposed to handle the concept of freedom? And you’d really just like to know more sometimes. You think there’s a lot you could think about. You’re just not sure you know enough to think about it. You don’t really know enough about the heroes and villains of the world, whoever those are and whatever they mean to people – to you, really. The world isn’t really yours, but so long as you are the only person in your own head, it might as well be. It’s tough to understand where you can safely split what things are and what you make things be. No one looks at things quite like you, do they?