Issue #07: letters
and loving to the point of invention.
Dear Reader,
Do you feel that you are loved?
I do.
Yesterday, I spent the afternoon rummaging through a secret compartment I made in one of my books; there, I kept my most favorite love letters. I also looked through an old metal chest where I kept more letters, usually from family and friends, and some from acquaintances who said nice things about me, so naturally, I can’t let go of their letters.
It was a lot. I have to admit, I didn’t go through all of them. But I went through enough to come to a realization: I am loved. I have always been.
These letters were given to me, handwritten for me, and printed and designed for me throughout the years. From the years where I terribly suffered from depression, anxiety, and self-harm to today where I am finally comfortable in my own skin and in whatever skin people wear in front of me. Throughout these years, there were a lot of times where I didn’t feel as if I was loved or if I mattered. But yesterday, when I reread those letters, I realized that, truly, I am loved. I have always been.
At any given point in time, there was always at least one person who loved me. I know this because it’s written. It has a date on it. It has a signature on it. I was loved. I am loved. I will be loved. Signed by theirs truly.
I haven’t always been loved in a language I understand, but looking back, it was still love. Today, I take comfort and joy that I am able to understand the way people are loving me. But most especially, I am beyond content that there is someone out there who loves me in my own language, and, if there is any instance I don’t get it, translates their love into something tangible then.
Dear reader, I hope you know that these letters are like love letters to you as well. I do my best to make you feel as if I am a real person who is willing to be vulnerable with you the safest way possible.
Today, I want you to know that you are loved. I know it.
If you don’t believe me, then let me confess: I love you.
In one way or another, I love you. On one level or another, I love you. In one form or another, I love you.
And you, dear, I love you most especially.
“Sometimes I feel like a caretaker of a museum — a huge, empty museum where no one ever comes, and I’m watching it for no one but myself.”
From Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
You Fool, Why is Nothing Wrong With You?
Here I stand, in the dark of night upon a lake of stars with the moon shining its light before me. Hoping for something in nothing, you promised and did not deliver, hence why I lie to myself believing you would deliver. Every waking moment, I long for your words to fill me with hope and happiness to get along. Every sleeping moment, I dream of a future that never was till I awake finding it was fraught.
I am absolutely exhausted from being called a friend or a brother. If only distance could kill this heart of mine.
Nothing changed. There is never an us. Every hope for it is as dead as the space between the stars. Why does it only have to be me left in the claws of destiny? Why does darkness have to visit me? Do I not deserve the warmth of the sun? Why do I leave in an eternal juxtaposition to this bright dawn you bask in?
I guess you have no answers for me. Maybe because you are just like me or in a position that is better off. I know that I look like a fool talking to the sun, the moon, and the stars as he waits for an answer that will never arrive to the question…
You fool, why is nothing wrong with you?
Running Away From The Darkness
I know, the darkness can be really scary. In fact, there are quite a lot of people out there who suffer from nyctophobia — an intense and irrational fear of the darkness. Yet even if we don’t have nyctophobia, darkness is most likely not on our list of favorite things.
It sucks to be in the dark, and being engulfed in the darkness can be painful. Melancholic. Confusing. Haunting. So we run, run, run away from it, as far as we can go. We run to escape the suffocating depths of the darkness... as if trying to find a light at the end of an endless tunnel. Trying to escape from a black hole. Trying to kill the dark shadows of the past — our own, precious, beautiful shadows.
After all, the world would be so much better without darkness, wouldn’t it? Because darkness brings suffering. Darkness is chaotic. Darkness is evil.
Right?
Wrong.
Because without darkness, we won’t see the stars. Without darkness, there would be no light. Without darkness, there would be no balance. Or at least, not in this temporary world.
We can’t truly run away from the darkness, but we can appreciate it. We can embrace it. We can see it in another light.
Because there is light in the darkness. Always.
We just got to be brave enough to find it.
“You are taken to a museum that exhibits every milestone in your life.”
Write: a short story, poem, or essay. (200 to 1500 words)
Draw/Design: poster(s) depicting or inspired by the prompt
Snap: photo(s) including description/context
Sabine Galagnara // Tsukiteaa
A higher power has decided to let Tsukiteaa live another day and she is going to make it everyone's problem. She is a digital artist who enjoys drawing stylized portraits, writing, and creating music. If you can’t find her doing any of that, you can most likely find her sitting around in a full face of makeup watching the entire hit Disney movie “Tangled” in her head or eating pasta at 3AM.
“There was once a very great American surgeon named Halsted. He was married to a nurse. He loved her immeasurably. One day Halsted noticed that his wife’s hands were chapped and red when she came back from surgery. And so he invented rubber gloves. For her. It is one of the great love stories in medicine. The difference between inspired medicine and uninspired medicine is love.
When I met Ana I knew:
I loved her to the point of invention.”
— Sarah Ruhl, The Clean House
Today, I know how to part from you.
Today, I part from you, knowing I have created something for you. I have given you my words and my time. You don’t know me but I know you. And what I know about you is that I think you should love someone to the point of invention today.
Cook for them. Write for them. Sing for them. Paint for them.
Make something up. Take the clay of your love and mold it into something new. Breathe life into it. Let your love for someone walk and become a living, breathing thing.
Out of love, I part from you. And then I ask of you: invent something, out of love.
Godspeed,
