Day 14: Letters

"The heaviest weight you ever lift is the problems you refuse to confront."

My old laptop broke about two months ago. I lost virtually every files I had on my old baby. Among the things in there, I was just angry that I lost my story, or a piece of me in there. I lost the only version of my book, or a novel-in-progress. I missed spending my night reflecting about myself and my past. It really helped to calm you if you can look back once in a while.

I got my files recovered during break (yay!!) and turned out, I recovered more than the old version of the novel. I recovered numerous of “letters” that I wrote to people, some of whom still doesn’t know the existence of such things. I reopened them and reread. Sometimes, I wondered how I can be such a good letter writer, like I don’t know, I should not be this good. All jokes aside, I know it feels creepy and it’s like I’m stalking others. But it is a way for me to reflect and to calm me down whenever I got angry at someone. Some of them reads:

“But it hurt me, too. I guess I deserve it, but it took a toll on me. There would be a ton of times I want to say sorry or to defend myself, but you would never let me... and I lost friends, which I don’t have many to begin with. I didn’t want to lose any friends, including you.”

Or:

“All I want to do, whatever I’m doing, is to make a difference in someone’s life. I want that when I die, I can say that I have helped people the way I can, that I have tried my best to support the people I care about… It can be summarized into this question... Should I care?”

Or:

“And that’s fine. Don’t change a thing. Let people use you, let they manipulate you. After all, if always putting others first is your value, you shouldn’t change it because of how others see it. If people can’t see through your wall and keep on using you, too bad for them because they miss out an awesome person inside. A vulnerable but caring, mature soul in you.”

Or:

“Finally, don’t let this whole experience mislead you into the belief that you shouldn’t love or care about someone ever again. It’s a great feeling. Sometimes you get hurt, sometimes you don’t. But it’s just a part of life and what makes it great. Every emotion is worthwhile, in a sense that each of them paint another color in your life.”

I could post many more, but you get the point. Actually, you don’t because I haven’t told you yet. If I could ever interact with others half as well as I write letters, I’m guessing my life would be better. But I hate confrontations. I can’t talk in front of people about them, or about anything. But anything will have its first, and I’ve learned that maybe, a conversation is needed. After all, only 20% of human’s communication is through speech. I’m working on it. It’s not comfortable, but I will work on it anyways.

Letters can only carry you so far in your quest to communicate with others.

It’s okay to be afraid of confrontation. We all are too nice to hurt someone. But it will be better that way, to be hurt once than to be in the dark forever.

So confront anyways.

Right?