Gia Raquel

I hold a love for writing letters that continuously grows with age. But what I sometimes forget is that they’re meant to be read too. I find myself writing to strangers, friends, and often, myself. I hardly ever send them out, frankly, they just thicken my notebook until I know it’s time to get a new one. When that time comes around, I look through all of them to see who has stayed, who has left, and possibly how much I have changed in the process. But other moments, I stumble upon these letters on my computer, usually so far lost between my labs and essays I forget I wrote something other than assignment requirements in my spare time.

In the past week, I began to worry. It was not the normal stress I feel on the daily, no, this was a psychiatric break of reality worry. For a few moments as I crouched beside my bed, I thought I had lost myself to where I often poke and prod in my carelessness as an invincible teenager. In that time, I had given myself up to the very thing I always promised I wouldn’t dare. I let my body and soul become possessed by the puppeteers of society and responsibilities. I allowed myself to grow lost and hollowed at the abandonment of my own promise. Even in my life, I have learned never to venture too closely to brinks of insanity presented as strangers who hold my identical features.

In a letter from what feels like years ago, I wrote a reminder to myself:

“And please remember, nothing and no one is perfect. Perfection is merely imperfection. So don’t get disappointed if you don’t do everything ‘right’. People make mistakes and know that it’s okay. You are human. Yet no matter how many times you write it on yourself, you seem to forget so.”

I understood this in the past, why can’t I apply this to myself now? How is it that so many times humanity forgets it is human? We drive ourselves to perfection where it no longer coincides with humane qualities. It derives from madness and recklessness. Why do we punish ourselves for being human? The world expects purity from a species that supposedly spawned from sin.

It’s that time of year where I have to reiterate this idea to myself as I turn around and do the complete reverse. I expect so much of myself when I give such little regard to my health. Why is that? How is it that I understand the meaning to my life is to be happy, yet most of the things I do lead me in the opposite direction? I find it a pity I’m spending the majority of my remaining youth slowly losing grip of my own sanity in attempts to gain security for the future. I keep on forgetting that I won’t be able to live a future if I continue the pathway I’m on. What kind of life is that?

I realize now how much I need to go back and read those letters. No matter the consequence, I have to take moments of breath to understand I am no extraordinary being. I am a sixteen-year-old writer attempting to understand who she is while trying not to completely lose it in the process. And if by the end of the day I’m happy, I’ll call it a success.