Dearest Lydia,
I just finished eating fresh cut strawberries drizzled with (read: drowned in) Hershey’s chocolate. Before that I sent a 20-minute long voice note to a dear, dear friend where I was questioning everything. And hence reading what you wrote – Whenever my anxiety kicks in and I find myself having to find out meaning in everything all over again – hit me right in all the feels that I have ever felt. It’s also pretty frustrating because I genuinely had a very nice day like I often do and yet I find myself losing meaning, hope and desire in everything and everyone and have to find it in me to be the one to guide myself back to it – whatever of it I have – and cheer myself up.
It’s exhausting and I don’t know how many times I will have to do that. But hey, we have people who genuinely love us and food that are tongues go crazy for and words…words like these that we can use to connect with people we have and will in all probability never meet but can still send love and hope to and in turn feel loved and hopeful ourselves. And that has to definitely mean something, right?
You said that you fantasize about not existing but not like in a suicidal way and I get that? Sort of. Of course this is a whole different thing and I may sound absolutely crazy if I share this but that’s exactly why I will go ahead and tell you – because I think, in some way, you will understand. When I was a child, like 5 or 6 years old, I used to spend my evenings with my older sister, who was probably 8 or 9 at the time, and our nanny on the rooftop of our apartment building. My sister would ride my bicycle – a dangerous place for a child to do so, now that I think about it, but our nanny would run after her all the time – and I would sit close to the edge – wow, our parents should have fired her – and watch the sun set and the sky change its colours a dozen times and I remember thinking…what if I just jumped off right now?
I think right about now it’s important to tell you that I was a pretty happy child with a normal family and life and at that point I hadn’t experienced anything traumatic that would make me want to kill myself. But at that point the concept of death…I don’t think it was clear to me because well neither was the concept of life. Obviously, I was like 6! But I do remember the reason I wanted to die – I wanted to know what happens after death! It was plain curiosity. I needed to know to a point that I thought what if I just jump off? But even at that age, by some weird logic, I knew that life is something precious and I can’t take this risk.
Now that I have actually articulated that a 100 questions are popping up in my head. Like is that why I had such few friends? What went on in my head? I was fucking weird from the beginning. And I say that with some sort of pride mixed with concern mixed with awe for my younger self. This quote from this k-drama comes to my mind:
We don’t even know where we’ll go in life, so how would we know where we go after we die? We all live without knowing anything and die without knowing anything.
And that last part…we live without knowing anything and die without knowing anything…is that is true, and by now I can tell that is probably is, then why do we make ourselves go crazy about trying to figure it all out? I think because even if it’s all meaningless in the end and we all die anyway, this life, whether it’s our first, our last or our only, whether it’s short or long – we have to live it. And to live we have to find meaning in the things we do daily, in the people we interact with and especially when we say – I love you.
And you have someone to say that to, in fact, you have two precious people – your husband and your best friend. Hearing about the little things your husband does for you and how you both are trying to create a family absolutely warms my heart. As a teenager, I always strongly voiced my personal desire to never have that. Now, of course, I can see a lot of it had to do with never believing I would find anyone worthy enough to do that with and fearing being subject to sacrifice and oppression like most women I know have. And I’m not quite sure where I stand on that now, as a 23-year-old, but I can understand that it can be a very beautiful thing. And I send a lot of love, hope and meaning your way. I hope you can feel it when you need it the most.
Nikki
I wrote this letter for Lydia based on some questions they answered. You can read the questions and their answers here.
Guys - I have received 29 people’s responses for The Love Project - 29 days of love letters. So I won’t be accepting anymore, however, you can read other letters here.
I may do this again later in the year and if you would want to receive a love letter from me then, you can drop in your email ID here xoxo
