dear seo,

I really do not know what I am doing.

Since graduation I have been working a retail job in my old college town, while I moved fifteen minutes north to live in a small, nowhere town.  I live in a large and lonely house.  I used to search for jobs every day.  This recently became less of a habit when I started substitute teaching.  Now I am working two jobs.  I am also trying to freelance design, which is sort of another job.  I say sort of because it adds to my work load, but not to my bank account.  I have been designing things for friends, which means for free.  I do not take photos as much as I used to.  I have been in and out of a serious relationship.  I have met new people.  I have lost contact with old friends and I complain about it often, but mostly because I am afraid of reconnecting with them.  I am scared that they will realize that I am the one who left, scared to admit that I was wrong, scared that it will never be the same as it used to be.  I have written two songs about this.  I have performed both songs live.  I have played one of them in my room until I cried.  I gave up chocolate and non-water beverages for Lent.  Today I had a banana mocha frappe.  I began praying daily.  I got a hamster, who is still nameless.  I just call him bro.  Or buddy.  I have gone whole days without human contact, and I have gone whole minutes feeling extremely blessed to share them with amazing people.  I have had more anxiety attacks than ever.  I have explored areas I've never been before and revisited old beloved ones.  I have played lots of basketball and eaten lots of strawberries.

I just want people to know that I am not perfect.  I want them to know that they are loved, by someone somewhere.  I want you to know that you will be hurt and held, bruised and believed in, left alone and loved again.  Yes, I want you to know that is how life is.  I want my friends to never give up, or to try again and again.  I want everyone to be good to everyone else and to find truth for themselves.

Really, I do not know what I am doing.

sincerely,

vm

to whom it may concern,

Happy new year, or whatever!

It turns out that the less time you waste complaining about your life on the internet, the more time you have to actually do something about it.  This is something I realized sometime in December and have begun to live out, and not as some sort of new year's resolution or anything, just as a new way to live my life.  I've skipped writing one or two of these here letters since then.  And to tell you the truth, as much as I don't want to admit it, the times I want to write the letters are when I feel crappy and under-appreciated.  But when I look at my life, I really enjoy it.

I mean, some of the best things are happening right now.  I met a beautiful woman who makes me very happy.  I have an abundance of time to spend alone.  I've got a car to drive and a smartphone to use and a parent who pays my cell phone bill and a family who loves me.  I've got a bed to sleep in and a five bedroom house that I currently reside in alone most of the time.  I live with my best friend, and even though he plays drums for the wrong band, I still love him.  My camera still works, my computer still works, my pens and pencils still work, my brain still works.  I have books to read, lots of books, and I read slowly so I will have them to read for the next couple years.  After a few weeks of this positive thinking, I bought a new guitar, the exact guitar I wanted, for half the list price, and now that is something to think positively about.  I've got friends who may not be around but care enough to wish me happy birthday (even a day or two late!).  I am another year older, older, older.

I've still got some issues to work out and there are still things that bum me out, but why should I waste my time telling you when I can get up and make the change myself?  So here's to making change.  Here's to getting up and going outside, or staying home and learning to enjoy it.  Here's to less sad things and more happy things.  Here's to finally understanding that posting things like "so bored, let's hang out" on social networks leads to absolutely zero results in the short run or the long run.

sincerely,

vm

dear lion,

Yesterday I climbed to the roof of our two-story house and read Sylvia Plath.  Apparently that sounds extremely depressing, but I promise it was anything but.  It was a nice day out.

I've been reading a lot lately.  I guess it comes with being out of school, only working part-time, and living twenty miles from anyone I might actually hang out with.  I read lots of comic books (thanks Ryan), graphic novels, and poetry.  I tried to read C.S. Lewis a few weeks ago, but couldn't make it past the first chapter.  So I returned it to the library and got more graphic novels and poetry.  The thing I love about comic books and graphic novels is that I can tell people that I read them because I enjoy the art.  And a lot of the time, that is true.  But something that I don't tell people is that my attention has been getting worse and that large words and over-sized blocks of text have begun to confuse me and make my brain hurt.  I wish I was exaggerating.  I get lost in long sentences.  I feel sick when a thought isn't complete after one page.  I don't know what is happening to me, but I hope it stops soon.  I'm waiting for my next paycheck so I can buy the new "Best American Short Stories", although I am so afraid that I will become overwhelmed by them as well.  I love short stories, and I can't imagine I will ever not be able to read them.  I hope I'm right.

(To clarify, when I say graphic novels I don't only mean of the superhero sort, but mostly of the serious sort.  Some great ones I've read recently are "That Salty Air" by Tim Sievert, "Embroideries" by Marjane Satrapi, and "Thoreau at Walden" by John Porcellino, which is sort of an illustrated version of Walden by Thoreau.  If only I could find a graphic novels of C.S. Lewis' work.)

Having so much alone time has caused me to become dependent on things like the internet and television, so I've been trying to step away from that more and more.  It's tough, because who in the world doesn't want to be lazy?  I've been trying to do more self-directed art and design projects.  I've been attempting to leave my phone in my room while I go downstairs to hang out with my roommates or read or something.  In the same way, I've been trying to get away from always being on my computer, or at least the internet.  Tonight I'm going to eat at a restaurant I dislike (for my friend's birthday) just because I want to go out.  A long time ago I posted on my photo blog about how I was trying to say yes more, to live and experience more.  I lost that for a while, but I want so much for that to be my mindset again.  I don't want to be a downer or a pessimist.  I just want to have fun.  Now that I've finally paid off my debts to everyone I owe (I hope) I have been able to save money and can eat more than ramen, so who cares if it's food from a terrible restaurant?  It will be with my friends, and that is what matters most.

I wish this letter was as deep and inspiring as my last letter.  It's not.  There have been a lot of ups and downs since then.  I still have my struggles with anxiety and dreams and so on, but there are some very good things going on as well.  I can't say that life is perfect right now, but I can say that it is only as good as you let it be.

So, in words I know you'll appreciate, just "let it be, let it be, let it be."

sincerely,

vm

dear owl,

For the first time in almost year I have slept in a real bed.  Then I took a nap, too.  This may be surprising to hear, but I'm actually looking forward to sleeping tonight.  Now, don't get me wrong, I still think sleep is a huge waste of time, but I am really happy about not having a broken back or a misaligned spine or whatever I've been doing to my future-self for the past year.

While it may be too soon to tell...okay, it is definitely too early to tell, but anyway...I think this "having a real bed" thing is going to be good for me in more ways than just physically.  I've already begun to realize that sleeping on a pull out couch (or the couch not-pulled-out, or the floor many nights) and trying to maintain my room-as-an-office atmosphere was contributing to and reinforcing a feeling of impermanence.  I created this idea in myself that my time here was temporary, not just in this apartment, but in my life.*  Ironically, I will be moving out in less than two months, so I haven't let myself start feeling permanent just yet.  The truth is that the way I've been dealing with school and relationships with new and old friends alike and especially my spirituality has been very selfish and unfair.  I've been constantly looking forward to "what's next" and not devoted time or energy to what is here, now, right in front of me.  I'm sure you can agree with this much, and in no way did I mean for this to be some kind of excuse/apology letter, but I hope you can forgive me all the same.

I don't believe that this temporal feeling stemmed from simply sleeping on a couch-bed.  As I said, I believe it reinforced the feeling.  I think the original reason for it has to do with many of my fears from the previous year, most of which came from losing a few important friends and spending much of my summer alone.  In all honesty, I think I wanted things to be impermanent.  I couldn't stand that the things I wanted to keep forever didn't last and that there was nothing I could do about it, so I began treating everything as if it would be here for only a minute and gone in another.  I didn't let myself get attached.  Unfortunately, I think it cost me a lot of potentially great friendships.  I think it has also kept me from really getting a routine down, especially one that includes time for praying and reading the Bible.  I haven't built a solid relationship with a local church either, convincing myself that I don't have time.  As simple and cliché as it is, the phrase "carpe diem" is one that I should have taken to heart a lot sooner.  Or maybe "carpe dium" is a better one.  Ha.  Either way, I know that I have not lived enough in this past year.  I have been too willing to let things get away, just as they inevitably will.  I've given up fighting and just began watching, waiting, hoping that good things would just happen but not striving to look for them or caring when they never did.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is this is my letter of resignation to the way I've been living and my official declaration to rejoin the fight.  Maybe it's a little too late, but I'm going to seize the rest of my days here for what they're worth.  I'm going to miss the crap out of my friends when they leave for a weekend.  I'm going to hold onto their ankles while they try to walk out of my life and cry when they shake me loose and shut the door.  I'm going to take risks, maybe take a girl on a date, kiss her, and not apologize for it.  Then I'll go home and pray or read the Bible or just watch an episode of Happy Endings without ever touching my stupid phone.  I'll turn the danged thing off when I go to the river.  I will go to the river.  I'll take off my shirt at the river, and maybe even jump in despite my extreme dislike of cold water.  I will realize that all good things don't just happen on their own, that I need to get out there and make them happen.  I will accept the fact that I am going to lose people for whatever reason and that I may only be in this place for a little while longer without letting it dictate my life and the way I live, or maybe let it influence me to embrace what I have while it lasts.  I will love you.  I will love myself.  I will love my life, day by ever-loving day.

sincerely,

vm

*This should not be confused with the "I'm just passing through" mindset one might have as a Christian looking forward to heaven.  That attitude has shaped my life in different ways than I have intended in this letter.

dear Kevin Moffett,

This is my first letter to a stranger.  After reading your story Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events, I didn't not feel some magical, unexplainable connection to you.  In fact, if you are anything like the character you wrote (who was the one writing the story), then we may be two very different people with little in common.  However, I did have several deep thoughts while reading it, and came to a few conclusions about my own life.  For that I thank you, and that is the reason I am addressing this to you.

***

I'm not sure how to say this without sounding cliché, so I'll just say it and ask you to be patient with me as I explain.  Love is something that I don't think anyone is able to understand or fully explain.  It seems that once you think you've figured it out, something changes and you're back at square one.  Sometimes you don't even realize that something which contradicts your entire love-belief system is right in front of you and has been your entire life.  Or sometimes it's something new entirely.

I used to scoff at people who said things like, "I believe that you can fall in love with more than one person."  It has always been such a silly notion.  I felt that falling in love meant a mutual love, something that could never be broken, and so once you fall in love, that's it.  No more lovers after that.  This is why whenever asked if I've been in love I am quick to say no.  Of course not.  Sure, I may have believed I was in love at the time, but when it was all said and done I could look back in hindsight and see why I wasn't in love.  Things not working out means no possible love.  Right?  Well, then today I read your short story.  It's not like I've never read or heard a story about a parent whose loses their partner to death and subsequently remarries, and I have definitely seen it on television or in movies.  But something about the way the father is in your story caused me to think more about this.  I guess because he was so calm, and seemed to be so wise despite the son's early ignorance to it all.  It made me want to think more about every situation to see what I could uncover myself.

The main thing I noticed about Frederick (Sr.) is, though it is never stated outright, how he loves his second wife.  He loves her, but he never conceals the fact that he still loves his first wife as well.  To him, love does not stop just because things don't work out, just because she is dead.  Yet he did not let that love keep him from finding a new love.  And it is because he is able to separate the two from each other that his new wife does not feel cheated or anything silly like that.  When I came to this conclusion, I then began to wonder, Yes, but his wife died.  What if she was still alive?  Would that be a different story?  I think it would be in most ways, but one thing that gets overlooked is how loyal love can be.  His second wife could take comfort in the fact that he knows not how to give up on love.  That love can endure.  I think that if you have a significant other that will show that much commitment to a past love, you should not be worried, yet you should delight in the fact that he or she is with you now, committing their present love to you, and if you ever feel unloved then that is your own fault.  This person knows how to love and will not stop simply because you moved on or did something bad or are dead.  Whether or not your marriage or relationship works out is a different story, but to have someone love you without end, no matter what...that is something worth living for.

These thoughts inevitably brought me to look at my own life, and at my mother, who has been divorced since I've been in any kind of public school.  I wonder about her, raising three children alone, never really finding love.  It's not something I've ever given much thought to.  I'm curious to know if she ever felt like she was "in love" with our father.  And if so, did she ever stop feeling that way or has that feeling continued on despite the turmoil between them?  These are questions that will remain unanswered.  There's not much point in asking them except to kill my curiosity.  I wonder, if she was never in love, why she never found it.  Was it God's plan for her to never experience true love?  Why?  Is there still time?  As much as my first conclusion, derived from your second-hand, probably fictional story, made me hopeful and happy, this second conclusion, from my own life, has made me a little sad.  Could it be we can go through life on a search for something that is to never be ours?  Is true love something that is our choice, is it up to fate/chance/luck, or is it entirely orchestrated by God?  Yes I believe in God, and yes I believe that if he doesn't want me to fall in love then I will surely survive and not care when I am dead, but I am not sure I will ever be able to give up hope in it.

So love.  True love.  Can it happen more than once?  Perhaps.  I'm beginning to lean toward yes, although I do not think it wise for anyone to test the limits.  Once is enough.  Can it never happen at all?  Sadly, yes.  There is something greater to live for in this life, but I will not say that this is not at all a sad fact.

sincerely,

vm

P.S.  When you said that Fred (Sr.) learned some exercises to help him control his dreams, was this entirely made up or is that real?  I would certainly like to know.  Thanks.

to whom it may concern,

I have some questions:

1. Why am I always the last to text?
2. Why am I always the first to start a facebook/skype chat?
3. Why do I usually hear about plans through my roommate?
4. Why am I not always invited?
5. Why won't you go out of your way to talk to/hang out with me?
6. Why don't you come over to my place for a change?
7. Why is it okay to flake on me?
8. Why do I care so much?

I ask myself these questions, but I keep coming up with the same answers.  So rather than write another depression-filled letter, I just want to know the real answers.  Be honest with me.

sincerely,

vm

dear you,

Getting close to you terrifies me.

sincerely,

vm