Day 5 - Your dreams

I remembered today, while we're still in National Letter Writing month:

I completely fell off the bandwagon with my 30-day letter writing challenge. For years now.

This was an incomplete, private entry from earlier this year, when I got laid off 14 days into the new year. I am coming up on my third month at my new job soon, and when the senior marketing coordinator piped up, What? You've only been here for two months?, It was exactly what I was thinking. 

What a difference a change of season makes.

* 

Dear Dreams,

This isn't exactly how I wanted to start off 2015, unemployed and unsure of where life is taking me. It being the year I turn 30 and all later this fall, I thought I was finally going to settle in and put my tumultuous twenties behind me. Mainly because I am so ready to turn this page already. 

And yet here I am, struggling with feelings of inadequacy and acute anxiety this week, trying, trying, trying, trying to snap out of this depressive fog I've mentally created and enveloped myself in.

There have been moments throughout these last few days where I am overwhelmingly grateful that we don't have a child to care for while I am job-searching, wondering what's next. I know it's a process - and yet this in-between place. It feels dark and scary and lonely, making it hard for me to think about my dreams. 

My dreams. They seem like a luxury now, a defense mechanism I am hanging on to in order to forget about what's at hand, the reality that my share of our household income will be next to zero after this month.

Day 4 - Your sibling (or closest relative)

Dear Brothers,

There are three of you so to be fair, I won't play favorites. At least openly. Heh.

Thanksgiving just passed and while I was a terrible daughter, not calling our father to wish him happy birthday until four days later, I'm not half as bad of a sister if I told you I am thankful for each of you and love you.

All this to say: It's kind of comical, yet totally logical, for me to realize that I feel -- that I am -- so much closer to each of you than to our own parents, combined.

We've had our disagreements and arguments, but we've always been in the same boat -- whether it was sailing or sinking, we taught each other to swim and held on to each other when we drowned. We saved each other and continue to do so -- through tears, through laughter, throughout the years, together.

And while I've frequently found myself envying other people's relationships with their mothers or fathers, I've never once wished for, nor thought about having, any other brothers but you.

(Except, of course, having a sister. But that doesn't count.)

I'm glad that I have been the kind of sibling you can turn to in your times of sadness as much as your times of happiness.

If I don't become a mother in this lifetime, I'll still die smiling, holding on to all of our memories together as sister and brothers.

Day 3 - Your parents

Dear Mom and Dad,

I'm sure that, under different circumstances, in a different frame of mind and moment in time, I would write something more positive and substantive and far less abrasive.

But tonight... tonight, I have no other words to say to you, other than the following:

You have been unkind to me these last few months and I still cannot fathom why you refuse to attend my wedding due to "religious" reasons when you have committed some of the biggest sins according to the Bible. I am no longer upset with you, but the distance between us keeps growing and growing, and for some reason, I am okay with that. I am not sad, I am not mad, only deeply disappointed.

I am your daughter, your one and only and oldest one, but there are days where I truly feel like we are complete strangers to each other and I find myself wondering why I still bother.

Day 2 - Your Crush

Dear Crush,

Thank you for letting me "love" you then, at the tenderest age of ten, when everything I thought I knew about that word and life in general were things I had only read and seen in books and movies I had devoured in secret.

Kind of like how I "loved" you then. I devoured you and everything about you -- secretly, feverishly, obsessively -- while you went on with your days as usual, not knowing, not caring, not mine while I yearned and longed and "loved" as much as I knew how to then.

When I turned thirteen, with wants and desires violently churning on my insides, I gave in to courage and timidly laid my chapped, bleeding lips on yours.

The saddest part were your eyes once I opened mine, feeling myself returning to reality; your eyes told me everything I already knew but didn't want to know.

Years later, when I returned to the city, I learned of rumors about you and who and how and what you had become. The girlish fantasies were no longer there, but I still felt a certain kind of fondness for you -- an appreciation for your kindness, for the boy who I remembered you as, and not the man everyone told me you were now.

As I sit here, forced to remember you, writing this letter to you now, I sincerely hope you are doing well today, wherever and with whoever you are. Most of all, I hope you never forget who you were then, a boy deserving of a young girl's love when she was merely ten.

Day 1 - Your Best Friend

Dear Best Friend,

It's funny, these two words making up one term. 

Best. 

Friend. 

It is almost as if it has an expiration date, not to be employed once we are past elementary school.  It almost sounds slightly trite, maybe even juvenile, for two women in their mid-twenties to refer to each other as such. 

And yet, at the same time, in an age where Facebook has diluted the meaning of the word "friend", and in a world where "best" is always relative, this simple, single, sewed-together term doesn't even begin to encompass the deep, deep love and support we have had for each other over this past decade.

And the best part of our unique friendship -- the very best part, is that I know, without a doubt, that there will be many more decades to come filled with laughter and tears with you, my beautiful friend and soul sister.  I don't know what I would do without you in my life, and I can't wait to celebrate yet another wonderful, most-likely-to-be eventful birthday with you next week!

30-Day Letter Writing Challenge

Starting today.

(Although, definitely not for the next consecutive 30 days.)


•Day 1 — Your Best Friend

•Day 2 — Your Crush

•Day 3 — Your parents

•Day 4 — Your sibling (or closest relative)

•Day 5 — Your dreams

•Day 6 — A stranger

•Day 7 — Your Ex-boyfriend/girlfriend/love/crush

•Day 8 — Your favorite internet friend

•Day 9 — Someone you wish you could meet

•Day 10 — Someone you don’t talk to as much as you’d like to

•Day 11 — A Deceased person you wish you could talk to

•Day 12 — The person you hate most/caused you a lot of pain

•Day 13 — Someone you wish could forgive you

•Day 14 — Someone you’ve drifted away from

•Day 15 — The person you miss the most

•Day 16 — Someone that’s not in your state/country

•Day 17 — Someone from your childhood

•Day 18 — The person that you wish you could be

•Day 19 — Someone that pesters your mind—good or bad

•Day 20 — The one that broke your heart the hardest

•Day 21 — Someone you judged by their first impression

•Day 22 — Someone you want to give a second chance to

•Day 23 — The last person you kissed

•Day 24 — The person that gave you your favorite memory

•Day 25 — The person you know that is going through the worst of times

•Day 26 — The last person you made a pinky promise to

•Day 27 — The friendliest person you knew for only one day

•Day 28 — Someone that changed your life

•Day 29 — The person that you want tell everything to, but too afraid to

•Day 30 — Your reflection in the mirror