Hi friends,
Happy Sunday. We are 15 letters in. Do you have any questions about the characters in the letters?
If so, please share with me and I’d love to know.
Thank you for reading! See you in the next one.
Xiao-Yu
Letter No. 15
J,
I woke up in a panic. My brain was confused again. It started the cycle of denial to protect me from the reality of pain. I had to put my hands on my heart and repeat to myself: It is okay. I know it hurts. I know. I am sorry you are hurting. But you are okay. It is okay. It is okay.
I don’t know whether this counts as lying. What do you think? I am not okay. It is not okay. Yet, what else could I do besides surrendering? I managed to get myself out of bed and out of the house for a walk.
Have you noticed how pain simultaneously makes the universe small and infinite? What I mean by that is, when one is soaked in deep agony, one can’t imagine anyone else possibly feeling the same way. One’s world becomes small and inevitably self centered. In reality, a small universe of people are going through similar loss and pain at the same moment. It is also within the same moment, people are falling in love, new babies are born, new books published, new products launched…The full spectrum of birth and death moving at its own mysterious rhythm, while we are invited to play our parts.
I want to play more of the boring parts with you, where we do our mundane daily life together. Grocery shopping. Taking a bath. Go on a trip. Fight about having separate comforters. Negotiate who gets the last mocha almond fudge bar. I’d trade the climatic parts – the ecstasy of falling in love and the pain of losing you, for the daily mundane.
My feet took me to the bakery three blocks away. Tony, the owner, greeted me with a warm smile. He asked me how I was doing. I said, good. After I ordered the coffee, it occurred to me that I forgot to return the courtesy. So I asked how he was doing. He smiled warmly, and said, good, can’t complain. I squeezed a smile and moved out of the line. He went on greeting the next customer with the same warm smile.
I would have felt bad for my awkward exchange with Tony. But I was in so much pain, I had little room to care. Do you think pain is capable of driving good people bad? I know you’d comment on how improbable it is for me to turn horribly evil because of how guilty I feel all of the time for the smallest things and how much I am thinking about others. I remember telling you I think that’s unhealthy. You disagreed.
The coffee picked me up. Now, as I am writing to you, I realized that I didn’t take one moment to look up at the sky on my walk. I was obsessed with the pain of losing you. I had to remind myself that I am playing my part. I am simply playing my part.
All my love,
Hannah
