Letters As A Life Vest

Photograph by Clara Johnk

As a child, I cried nearly every day. I was always “upset” about something for “no reason.” I was too empathetic for my own good; I would bawl and attempt to explain but barely get a word out as huge waves of emotions came crashing down on me, cascading from my eyes like melancholic waterfalls. These metaphorical waves soon swelled into tsunamis as I became swallowed up by my ineptitude to express myself and what was “wrong.”

In elementary school, I was the only kid who brought the notorious “cold lunch.” Many times my mom would slide my forgotten lunchbox across the backseat to me as I anxiously whipped the car door open to retrieve it. I would sit for a moment, teary-eyed, trying to catch my breath, explaining to her I left it behind when I jumped out of the car. She’d nod and reassure me that everything was okay, remaining parked until I vanished behind the front doors. Within the confines of this lunchbox was a Ziploc bag of grapes and a turkey sandwich, but, more importantly, a handwritten Post-It note from my mom. “I love you,” she wrote. “I hope you have a wonderful day!” Reading this note, it felt as though my chest was filled with warmth; her words radiated within the walls of my ribcage. Ten simple words, and never again would I forget to grab my purple lunchbox.

I consider my mom’s sticky notes to be letters. An invitation to understand what someone is feeling, a gift of reassurance or explanation in a permanent medium. Letters take various forms, like Post-It notes, birthday cards, postcards, written declarations of love (or hate)…the list goes on. To me, a letter features a written message; its complexity knowing no bounds. These Post-It notes were my first experiences with what I consider to be letters, and I only became more familiar with this form of expression when I started facing difficult conversations. 

In middle school, my mom and I would get into the typical, insignificant mother-daughter fights. One night after a disagreement, I left a note at the end of her bed, hoping she’d see it in the morning before driving me to school. Thankfully, she had, and later expressed she had never been able to understand me better than she had at that moment. My eyes were opened to a new means of communication, and I have not stopped writing since.

If I love you more than words can verbally explain, I’ll write you a letter, my words speaking volumes on paper alone. If I were betrayed by someone and needed to communicate the hurt they’ve caused me, I’ll surely write them a letter—whether I actually build up the courage to give it to them or not. If I am barely able to decode my own scrambled, anxious thoughts, my first instinct is always to write myself a letter. In most scenarios, I will undoubtedly write a letter. I just might not always know exactly what I want to say, or how I want to say it.

I once loved someone and did not know how to tell him. For someone who seemingly always knew what they internally wanted to say aloud but could not always vocalize it effectively, I was at a crossroads. Not only was I not able to tell him how I felt with my voice, but it was as if my hand had lost all coordination with my brain. I was a mess over him, my first love…well, I think he was my first love? 

Essentially, I would regularly spend my time at school trying to figure out what it was about him that made my stomach feel like a washing machine, the water wildly whipping around as the cycle would attempt to cleanse the contents within. I’d dissect every interaction shared between this boy and myself over and over, as if I could have found the words to explain how I felt about him somewhere within the moment our shoulders brushed when he bumped into me on my way to my second period Spanish class (which he coincidentally had to drop out of). 

After deducing that I either loved or loathed him, I realized I had met my match; however, I do not mean my perfect match, but my metaphorical match. This was the first time my words and my writing failed me. I considered,  is this a flawed system? I mean, it couldn’t be, the pen will always be mightier than the (s)word. 

And it proved its reliability once more. One day, I decided I needed to figure out how I truly felt once and for all. I sat down at my desk in my bedroom, turned on my lamp, and ripped a sheet of lined paper from my spiral notebook; more specifically, from the same notebook he had asked me to “borrow” a piece of paper from the day prior (and the day before that, and the day before that…). Once I began writing, the words flowed onto the paper like a stream of conscious-turned-waterfall. I collected my jumbled thoughts and etched them into a scribbled mess across the light blue lines of the paper.

Once complete, I gained a clearer picture of just how to interpret what it was that I was feeling. I would soon invite him to read this letter and he would eventually go on to write me back, telling me he felt the same—there were many more letters after that. For a while, the letters continued on and off, as did we. Our handwritten love notes became timestamps, freezing moments and memories that cannot be seen through a camera lens. Simultaneously, with that same person, I sat at that same desk and wrote to him maniacally, telling them how furious I was with him and that we were “over.” 

It’s funny, isn’t it—the contrast between the two? How one can use the same medium to let anything that comes to mind pour out of them onto a sheet of paper, as if a deeper part of them has possessed their pen, the ink seeping into the paper, leaving a stain of one’s thoughts at a particular moment in time. This freedom of expression is what draws me so much towards writing. It has become my saving grace in times when I am incapable of speaking for myself, physically unable to allow these thoughts to escape from my mouth. 

In moments when the tides of my anxieties are whisking me away and I am engulfed by waves of emotions, writing and reading the words others have dedicated to me has saved me. These exchanges of letters have acted as a life vest, keeping me afloat in circumstances where I was losing the ability to tread water on my own.