I am placing these thoughts into boxes of letters only once as to not forget the mind and gravity of my world at age 18. If you read this letter before you die, I hope it makes you weep possibility that stains your tempered cheeks and if you read it after, I am anticipating a letter in reply.
The purpose of my life is human connection. Perhaps it is why I have never been in love. The irony in this statement is welcome but its presence is completely irrelevant in my life. I do not want to devote my time to only one when there are 7 billion others to familiarize myself with.
Let me define love for you. It is interesting that something so utterly intangible can paint such an expensive picture that you want to purchase and hang on your heart forever. Of course, it is physical, affirmative, overwhelmingly sure yet always aided with maybe, but it is also heartbreak, too much maybe, blindsiding, and choking you until you forget its intention. I am not sure that I believe it yet, but I know this to be its definition.
Everyone wants to be what they are not. Girls want to cheer and boys want to play and we like to satiate ourselves with the images our screens feed us. Feeding the idea of you, leaving you starving. It hurts me to imagine a world without the Internet’s voice, but it hurts me more to imagine myself talking to the voice. I want to stay who I am in the only body that has ever carried me anywhere. Jealousy may compromise this in times of doubt, but I know any other mind would leave me unsure of myself.
Sometimes I like to feel darkness. Sometimes this isn’t bad.
Society glamorizes feeling alone and being sad. Whenever someone is sad, I find myself making it my duty to tell a joke. I want to not care so badly but emotions always get in the way. Yet I do not always have enough compassion when things go wrong. I blame it on being a selfish 968-week-year-old, but there may be more to it than that. I will write you back when I find out. If I find out.
222 months later and I feel that chicken noodle soup is too plain for me. I have always felt brainless for ordering something so ordinary from a restaurant or pouring it out of a monotonous can from my kitchen pantry, and then get even more fired up after ingestion for having expected better. How could you combine such ordinary flavors and expect it to restore my sick soul? I would like something that will inject life and color and oddity back into my body in case of cold. Do not ask me if I would like a bowl of chicken noodle soup.
Some people are ordinary. Some people want ordinary because they feel awkward and irregular. Some people want chicken noodle soup. Some people have picky palettes and feel disturbed after saying something without having thought of it twice fold before it poured out of their sorry lips. JUST SAY IT! I’m begging you, please just say it. What is the point of leaving it behind your eyes? There is not enough room in your head for meaningless contributions that could be thought to be better when painted with sound or secrets that will eventually fall useless in the ground. Secrets are secrets because they are gone through the trouble of being kept in yearning of eventually being shared. Otherwise they would just be thoughts.
I like to keep things to myself for the sake of feeling clever. I like it when people do not know what is going on inside my head. But I like telling you everything, too. I like when people like me. But it can be exciting to think that someone doesn’t. I like feeling so much at once that I have to cry about it. I do not like when my feelings are hurt, but it gives me something to write songs about. The people that are almost dead to me would need to cut off my arm to prove it true.
As I grow older water takes longer to evaporate. Why do I feel older than I ask to be? Everything is magnified, but some things aren’t meant to be remembered. I find it so incredibly intriguing that entire bodies of humanity can go through trends together, and then forget about them all at once. Sign of the times.
Brush that off and go along with this. Sometimes it is hard to think that no one is ever going to care about you or your problems as much as yourself. In “Joyas Voladores,” Brian Doyle confirmed my thoughts too closely. “When young we think there will come one person who will save and sustain us always; when we are older we know this is the dream of a child, that all hearts finally are bruised and scarred, scored and torn, force of character, yet fragile and rickety forevermore, no matter how ferocious the defense and how many bricks you bring to the wall.”
When things go foul and everything in life wants to take turns swinging at me, I pray that God doesn’t give up on me. I pray that I don’t get stuck working a mediocre job just to pay the bills. Like I said, that is not the point of life. I am not living to please others and have a stable lifestyle. I want passion, and dedication, and endurance, and a never-ending drive, and strength, and fearlessness, and SO MUCH passion and fervor in what I do that I will not want to stop it even through death. If I ever took the easy way out and gave up on a hard dream to live inside of, I would never be able to forgive myself. What is the point of being alive if you don’t at least try to do something remarkable?
Sometimes I think about all of this.
