8/31/10

"

8.25.10

Dear Stranger,

I am in love with winter.

I like to help people. I have few gifts or strengths or talents (or maybe more, I doubt myself often,) but one thing I'm really good at is caring about people in pain. The kind you sometimes see in someone's eyes when he or she isn't completely focused on hiding it. You distract them for a second and then there it is – that shimmer of pain, that sinking feeling, that hole. I make stories in my head about people. A grouchy lady at the checkout counter? Don't hate her. Maybe she's losing her family. Maybe she was happy once. Maybe she was in love and thought she had everything. Maybe she clung too tightly, and he didn't understand why or how she could do that, so he left her. Maybe her son blames her for it. Maybe now this job is all she has, and her son secretly hates that she'd cling to a job like that – hates that she's the grouchy bag lady. And the seeds of not-understanding are blooming inside all of them, and the flowers are those glimmers of pain in their eyes. Why do I think these things? These are terrible things. You'd think it'd be easier to imagine happy stories. At least, it'd feel better, right? But nope. I don't even have to try. In a split second, a story unfolds and untwists and it's there before me like a book.

I think I think those things because maybe, if other people feel such terrible things, my own pain will pale in comparison. I suppose it's worked, because my own pain is nothing compared to those invented pains. And I'm a pretty happy person. Maybe the reason I want to help people is because I want all their problems and pain and sadness to just wash all my problems and pain and sadness away. But that seems so selfish, so I hope it isn't true.

I don't like that kind of pain. That empty pain. Abandoned and hurt and confused pain. Hole-in-my-heart pain. It doesn't hurt like a knife, it hurts like a disease. Slow and dull, but crippling. It grows bigger and bigger and eats away at your insides until there's nothing left and you're dead. Actually dead or metaphorically dead, it doesn't matter. You're dead.

The cause of all this pain, I think, is just other people. And how sad is that? Sometimes the dead-on-the-inside people just infect other people, and the death spreads. Sometimes two people just don't know what they're doing or why they're doing it or why they feel those things, and the pain is the stuff that fills the gap they make when they leave each other. There's nobody to blame, because they both thought they were doing what's best.

There's the other kinds of pain, too: injury, hunger, sickness, separation, loss, to name a few. I'm pretty sure these kinds of pain are on a deeper, more basic level. By that I mean they are more natural to the human conditions, (whatever the heck that is.) They're easy to feel. We feel them often. They hurt just as bad as any other kind of pain. But they seem, to me at least, to be more pure. They're a lack of something vital. Nourishment, health, loved ones. We can fight to protect these things. Not violence, fist fights, wars, etc. We can struggle. We can struggle to protect our loved ones and keep them safe or alive. We can't always win, but we can always try. It hurts to lose, sure, and it hurts to see other people lose, but that's Life. Capital L life. And in a way, it's beautiful.

That other pain? The empty pain? That's not life. Not Life. It's Death. It's the opposite. It's what sneaks into our lives and stops us from Living. It makes us forget what's important. It makes us take things for granted. This bad pain is a weight, and of course what happens when you hold onto it? You sink. When you hold on to the good pain, when it holds onto you, you wake up. You fight it off. You get angry, get passionate. You care.

And I wish people cared like I care.

I once went camping in the mountains in the middle of winter, all alone. I took a tent and a little stove and a knife and some firewood and some matches and a hell of a lot of warm clothes. The campsite was closed for the winter and the campsites were buried in feet of snow, but I stayed anyway. I spent an hour scraping snow out from under a whispy Douglas Fir until there was enough dirt showing to pitch a tent. The ground was so frozen I could barely hammer the tent stakes in. The stove could barely heat the water faster than the bitter air was freezing it. For two days and one night, I ate when I could and slept when I could, and when I walked where I could. It wasn't really 'survival,' but it was camping. And I froze my ass off.

It was the quietest two days and one night I have ever experienced. No. Sound. The woods and the mountains were asleep under their blankets of frost, and I slept there with them.

I never once thought about the girl who liked me, but whom I didn't like and I'm not sure why, even though I should have liked her, because she liked me, damnit, why didn't I like her back? Why was I instead chasing after the girl who wouldn't ever even dream of being romantic with me? Why was my life becoming some cliché sitcom? Why wasn't I really happy with work? Why wasn't I happy at school? Why wasn't my life where I wanted it to be? Why did I feel worthless? Why had I made the choices I did? Where was my life headed?

I didn't think about any of that. Instead, I thought about staying warm and staying fed, and I shivered and made footprints in the snow.

Love,

Alive."

8/25/10

"Dear Stranger,

First off I want to thank you for listening to me ahead of time. Its nice to now that there are people out there (other than me) that want to know who the strangers you come across every day really are. Not just the standard okay you five people without thinking when they ask how you are. But the truth. I just want to thank you for your kindness and/or couriousity.
 

I always wanted to do something like this. I would be sitting on the bus on my way home and I would start to think. (Which can get pretty dangerous for me because once I start I never stop) I think, what if I just blurt out to the tired looking woman in the waitress uniform how my day was. Or tell how I had to take care of myself after my father decided to kill himself when I was six and my mother locked herself in her room for the next seven years and did crack. Despite how much I want to tell all of my secrets to strangers, I never did. At least till now.

Well that is probably the longest introduction to a letter I have ever written and that you will probably ever read. I wish I could read your letter, just so I could know a little about who I am writing to. But its probably better that I don't.
   

I am the girl sitting quiet in the back of the class. I read too much. I own too many books. I dance it out. I think too much, I talk too little. All of my dreams are of going somewhere exciting, somewhere new. I can't make up my mind. I love music. I love movies. My mother is now the closest thing I have to a friend. I love art. When I say some thing I think is funny no one laughs, but when I don't think what I said is funny everyone else does. I laugh at my own jokes. Despite all this I have no idea who I am.
    

Well stranger this letter didn't exactly turn out how I thought it would. But I still like it. I'm going to end my letter to you here. I may not know you but I still hope your living a happy, fufulling life. That is a goal that everyone has and I hope you've acheived it. If you haven't yet thats okay too. Because you'll get there. I sure hope I do. Now stranger, I'll never forget you and please don't forget me. Live, Love, Laugh, and be Happy.

Love and hugs from,

The girl in the back."

8/14/10

8/13/10

Write a letter!

8/9/10

"Dear Stranger,
    To be honest, I feel a bit nervous writing this. I keep wondering who you are, what you're like, your life. I am sitting on a stool at the kitchen bar-counter. Writing this letter. I have Dear Reader playing on my iPod, putting me in the perfect mood. Behind me are the bright yellow dining room walls, and even farther, my village. The tiniest town I have ever seen (don't blink or you'll miss it!), but I love it with all my heart. What about you? Where do you live? What do you look like? These thoughts keep going through my mind. I wonder how old you are? Do you have any hobbies, any loves?

    I know that we will never meet, and if we did (by some miracle), I would not know you were the person, the stranger, I once sat down and wrote to. And you would not know that I once sent an anonymous letter to you. But that doesn't matter, not in the slightest. All that matters is that we connected. When my pen hit this paper, and when your hand touched the envelope, we made a connection. Even though we may life in different parts of the country (the world!), we have touched the other's life. In ten, twenty, even fifty years, neither of us may remember. But that does not matter,  because this connection will last. It may be strongest now, in this moment, but perhaps later in our lives, we will find ourselves thinking of each other. I pray that we do.

    Thank you so much for unknowingly touching my life. And thank you for allowing me into yours.

    I love you.

    -Just another face."

Be a stranger. 

Email: 8.9.10

"Dear Stranger,

It's hard to write this.  Not hard as in too painful, the kind of pain that makes your chest heavy and eyes move slowly, but hard in this shit is just too difficult to start.  Like an essay for a class about a topic that you don't care about.  Like proofs in geometry.  At least, I remember proofs being hard.  Maybe a better word would be difficult.  This is difficult to write.

The only time I get self-conscious is when I become self-aware.  You know self-awareness?  The supposed human-specific trait that separates us from animals?  I say think of your favorite song, and, even though the song will not be physically playing, you can hear it in your head?  Or I say think about how you look right now from a bird's-eye view, and you could picture it, in your head?  That's self-awareness.  And whenever that randomly happens to me, I may be at work, at the gym, on a date (especially on a date), or hammered drunk in the backseat of a friend's car, I become self-conscious, even borderline embarrassed.

There was no point to that paragraph, just thought I would let you know.

I should tell you what I am afraid of, I suppose.  I am afraid of being average.  Makes me seem kind of pretentious, doesn't it?  Maybe I should try and be more specific.  I want to change the world.  I do not want to slave and drudge and hate my job until I reach retirement age and then leave it all alone.  I do not want to live in a simple house with nothing to look forward to after work except a cold beer, the game, and weekends (although, every now and then, that would be pretty nice).  I want to be remembered.   My father gave me some advice, "Whatever profession you choose, you work until you are the best in the world at it."  That is good advice.  But the pressure that indirectly puts on me scares the hell out of me.

Back to being average.

I don't want to just get married and have 2.5 kids and a dog and live in the suburbs somewhere.  I want to be excited.  I want to live adventurously.  I want to have stories to tell.  I want to be...interesting (like that dude in the Dos Equis commercials, only, like, way better, somehow).  I am afraid that if I don't hurry up and figure my shit out that I will end up not having reached the full potential of my life.  And, I mean, shit, we only get like, one of those, right?

That self-awareness comes into play with the very irrational fear of inadequacy I just admitted to you.  Sometimes (usually when I am driving home from work) I become self-aware about my current state and it gives me a pseudo-anxiety attack.  And I get scared.  It's not like I know what I am doing, right?  Each decision I make is no better than an educated guess based on absolutely no precedence.  But this feeling has a bi-polar switch to it.  If I get lows, I get highs as well.  Sometimes I get self-aware and I feel like I could strangle the world with my bear hands (that's not a typo.  Literally.  "Bear" hands).

But I cannot pretend like my life is just a trial after a tribulation.  It's not.  Both my parents are alive and in good health still (knock, knock), my older brother is my best friend, I have many good friends that I will probably know for the rest of my life, I have a decent job in a good area.  Then why the self-awareness freak outs?  People I confide in, such as yourself (I like to imagine you as someone that could be described as "innately inconspicuous," am I close?), say that everyone goes through stages like this in their lives.  Maybe you are going through such a stage yourself, in which case, this letter is very serendipitous.  Maybe you're not, in which case, um, you can file this under the "whiny bitch" pile and be on your way (you're such a jerk for doing that, by the way).

I also cannot pretend to be extremely deep or existential (I feel that makes letters like this seem contrived.  I am not going to try and stitch together vague metaphors about the world or human existence.  Those people seem boring.  Does that make me a dick?).  Maybe I just like good, optimistic stories about something funny rather than a sad sermon on how fucked we all are.  I like to think I am a useful member of society just because I care.  There goes that pretentiousness again.  Damn, I think I may really be a dick.

I judge people.  I say horribly racist and filthy things.  I think inappropriate thoughts.  I like to drink too much.  I curse.  A LOT.

But I open doors for strangers (+1 if you smile at me.  And if you're a cute girl, well, it's a done deal).  I say please and thank you.  I smile and say hello to strangers (such as yourself) on the street.  I love my family and friends.  I listen when you talk.  I read.  A LOT.  I enjoy running around like a little kid with a cape on.  I like thinking big thoughts.

I also talk way too fast.

Which is why I typed this.

Now, please, tell me a funny story.  I got one after you.

Sincerely,"

Write a letter to a stranger. 

8/8/10

Transcription:
"My Dearest Stranger,

    People wait lifetimes and pay thousands for a chance like this. A chance to pour their heart out to someone without fear of judgement.
    But I'll be honest with you, my stranger, you terrify me.
    Who are you?
    What's your life like?
    Do I know you?
    Have we passed on the sidewalk?
    Do you hate me?
    What is your story?

    Everyone has a story. That's my job telling stories, and let me tell you business is down.
    I write to you stranger looking for hope.
    My bank balance is 0. I have no car, no house, no college degree. I was uprooted from everything I knew and love and moved into a $320,00 house where I'm not welcomed, into a neighborhood with four story houses, where people don't appreciate my worn out cowboy boots and hot pink nails.
    You don't realize how much you miss something, love something, till you lose it. I miss my friends, my car, my getaways, my cat.
    She died while we were moving here. I wonder if we had stayed if she'd still be here. I guess it doesn't matter now.
    I miss her so much. I still cry about her. It's been a month. They tell me it gets easier. I wonder if that's true.
    In the midst of all this Stranger, I have lost my words. My words, my life, my career.
    So I beg dear Stranger, tell me a story, your story.
    Fill it with adventure, romance, intrigue.
    Fill it with your heard, your soul, everything I'm currently missing.
    So my stranger we come to the end. I've never been good with goodbye's.
    I wish to leave you with some type of advice, some kind of comfort. But nothing comes to mind. So stranger simply know that I love you and I'm thinking of you. Wherever you are. And stranger, please never forget me.

Your loving Stranger."

Be a stranger!