If You Want To
Read this letter if you want to.
I don’t know who’s reading this, or if there is anyone who’s reading this. But if you’re here, maybe you’re looking for some words of encouragement.
Maybe life hasn’t been treating you well lately. Maybe the storms have been raging on, with no sign of clear skies. Maybe each night you fall asleep not because you’re sleepy, but because you don’t really enjoy your waking moments anymore.
You’re not alone. That’s what I’d like to remind you first. That whatever you’re going through, there’s a lot of other people going through similar. In fact, every person you see, even though who feign happiness and excitement in their lives, are probably living in their own moments of despair when no one else is around.
But saying ‘you’re not alone’ is a really crappy thing to say, don’t you think? Just because other people are going through the same crappy times doesn’t make your crappy life less crappy.
I’d like to say it gets better. And it will. There will be moments where you forget all about the pain, the loneliness, the insecurity, the uncertainty. There will be a time where you wake up each morning excited to see what new days bring.
But then it’ll get bad again. And you’ll forget all about the happy times, because the only thing you’ll think about is how dark and gloomy life is right now.
So what to do? What can we as mortals do to face the inevitability of both the soars of happiness and the abyss of sorrow?
For a while, I thought that the best thing to do was to pull yourself from the world and feel nothing. I thought that by cutting myself off from others and suppressing whatever I felt would be the best course of action to deal with the uncertainty of life.
But that only made me feel worse. By trying to not feel anything, I found that my life was devoid of any meaning. Sure, I was alive, but I wasn’t really experiencing life in a way that would be memorable or meaningful.
In the closing scenes of ‘Call Me By Your Name’, the main character, Elio, is on the receiving end of a long-winded speech from his father. In an attempt to tend to Elio’s broken heart, his father reminds him:
“We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything — what a waste.”
Choosing to feel nothing, so as to not feel anything, truly is a waste. Our emotions are an integral part of our lives, our experiences, our identities.
Yes, the lows will always feel painful and confusing. The sting of loneliness does not dull over time.
But when you’re at your lowest, you have nowhere to go but up. When you’re at your worst, then the only direction you can move towards is somewhere better.
I can’t promise when you’ll be better. I can’t promise that when you do feel better, it’ll last for a long time. But what I can promise is that you’ll get there. And if you ever feel bad, you’ll get better again.
Find comfort in knowing that when the sun sets and life gets dark, the sun will rise once again and shine a bit of light in your life.
So feel whatever you’re feeling. Let sadness and loneliness wash over you. Blast music in your ears and cry your heart out. Write long letters in books that are stained from your tears and sweat. Dance alone in your room to music you haven’t heard since you were 10.
Learn to live with the sadness and loneliness. Let it happen because what you’re feeling on your worst days are just as much a part of you as what you feel on your best days.
Happy days will come when you least expect them to. And when they do come, you’ll appreciate them even more because you know they might go away.
Don’t feel nothing. Feel anything you want to.
One day, you’ll be better. We’ll be better. You may not be okay now. You may not be okay tomorrow, or the day after, or next week. But for now, we’re learning to party with our darkness.
And that’s okay.
