If you’ve read my previous post, you’ll know that my brain can be a massive bag of lols. And to be honest, I thought it was relatively under control, but then I almost started crying in the supermarket aisle yesterday trying to decide between Tesco chocolate chip cookies and another chocolatey variant of biscuit so nevermind that. And if you’ve seen the last post, there’s this short bit where I quote from a letter I once received from a very close friend. This letter is always in my mind, and on the days where things get too overwhelming, I open my mental inbox, search around for these words, and I breathe a little easier. For context, I was given this letter when we had both suffered really bad mental breakdowns, almost kind of one after the other. It has helped me get through so much, and I hope it sheds a little light for you too, whatever you might be facing:
Dearest, dearest, Julia:
You beautiful sunfish — existence has been so hard lately. I suppose you know. I’m not sure why any of this is the case, honestly. Certainly there are things that are hard, but it seems for the most part they would be quite alright if only I wasn’t completely fucked in the head. I’m not sure how any of this got to be this way. But you’re right: for all of Gettier cases and our male friends’ strange excitement about things like epistemic luck, there are things that I know. I know that you love and care for me and that April Ludgate days are the best days, and that I am unspeakably thankful that you are alive and here to walk all these strange and hard paths with me, but most of all to laugh at how bright the light is — how light this existence can be, on the rare and precious moments we push through the brambles in our mind and lay down the heaviness burgeoning in our heads for long enough to know how wonderful things can be sometimes be.
And for all the thorny hedges that block out the light just before it touches our eyes; for all the dense fogs and high floods that choke our paths and make it hard to even see or breathe — I think we’ll be alright. I’m not sure how (or why any such thought might be justified, really) but we have one another; we have Parks and Rec and weird friends and we are perhaps more determined than we ever thought we might be or would have to be — but above all, we have an indomitable passion for weirding the absolute fuck out of people. And I think we’ll be okay.
At the end of it all, I suppose what I’m saying is: existence is hard. I can’t honestly say I wouldn’t have it any other way. But you, and this friendship: that’s different. Whatever wonderful or unspeakably awful things we might find before us, I hope you’ll be there. That I’ll be there, too. That we’ll get through all of it together, as silly as that might sound.
P.S. You are an immensely beautiful sunfish, and I love you. Also, I think the main thought there is that I think our collective weirdness/propensity to be disproportionately stupid and ridiculous will get us through the terrible nonsense that’s bound to be ahead, given how stupid existence and people are. Hugs.
