A Letter To My Older Sister

My dearest older sister,

You are more likely to remember how damaged my state was, and how hard it was for me to fully recuperate. With the windows down, the wind whooshed in the car and through strands of music that seemingly hoarded all my weight and threw them out — we were singing in the vibrating hymns of your vehicle, I recollected. With that, I have decided that you, my dear sister, are the one who is more than capable of understanding and analyzing my anatomy, who knows my chapters better than I do, whose words and thoughts stand unparalleled to many who’ve wanted me to heed their advice. You have the talent to share what you think without sounding like a well-built therapist whose neocapitalism of psychological information does more harm than means well.

So, I have to dedicate this speculation to you and how it has impacted me overtime.

My journey has directed me astray at some times by reason of insurmountable actions committed by many horrid people. It has really come to my utter attention that I then must afford myself the time to research myself by researching others. It is my life’s thesis, which is all I can say as of now, that I do so to maintain myself healthy and well. Etched on my bedroom walls are the unprecedented amounts of imaginative topics I have longed to research in due time, but the titles inked on this journal so far imply that the research entries I’ve written are tombstones owed to prejudiced, harebrained individuals from several parts of the globe. Initially, the ideas per entry will start to bruise on me as a mere mistake I’ve made on my part, something small that all it takes is a band-aid — an apology or a critical review — for it to cease the ache. Though, like a snowball rolling down on a steep hill, it will build up continually, swelling and reddening on my skin until my mind wonders and my fingers dangerously itching to type a thesis. In the end, I will remember all I’ve accumulated — what has prompted me to write each entry beginning from what initially started out as a bruise, eventually leading to my addressing the problematic issues that regard our current setting.

The events building up to studying for myself will worsen, that sometimes the research entries themselves become the reasons that I cry. That sometimes the research entries become the way I rid my naivety and innocence. When you can’t tell anyone your stories, you have to learn to tell them to yourself to remain strongly pragmatic and mentally coherent. During quarantine, I have decided to analyze my physiology so that I wouldn’t feel so bad for you pegging my character perfectly, and so I can confront myself without dread. Without these speculations, not only would I have allowed myself to maroon in the past but to also condone my neglecting all that I am or was. Without them, I would have kept a dwelling cave of untold stories that I want telling, and in the end, I will want them to be noticed even if the gauche jokes that I may have secretly weaved into my acknowledgements will only be understood by me. The only sensation that remains while I write them is a spontaneous mix of gusto and frustration and rigor and lethargy and passion. I enjoy the process with every bit of fiber in my being as much as I hate it to the extent that I ask myself the point of it. Then I remember that it is myself and my life I’m analyzing, and how most people are living it. Or living in it, like a dollhouse, and each room represents a new facet of the globe and the objects that inhabit it symbolizes events that will engage them in doing either better or worse.

Committing to this is not by far easy, but it is fulfilling that my empathy and purpose has awakened, my craft and interest aroused. This almost-summer feeling that you get when you near the end of the process of your research will be at best intellectually and emotionally gratifying, and at worst melancholic and tasteless — because, ultimately, you would have started passionately, remained faithful to this occupation as a student, and then end with none: no passion nor occupation. Episodes of sweat and tears from realization, disquiet, or exhaustion will have meant something, but it is only in the duration of the process that you would have felt this, unknowing of the paper’s complete end.

Most have looked at me in askance: “Why do you do this?”

And I’ve already told you why, above. The question will frequently come again so many times but I’ve heard it enough to stop perking my ears from the moment it is asked of me. My ambitions towards myself, while I’m still existing, may have prolonged itself, surpassed its limits in some nights, however it has enhanced my eyesight quite a bit and has donned me a new skin.

My dear sister, I have cried from learning new things, the way some people have learned besmirching hypocrisies by learning how to read. I have witnessed death in videos of what I, and many of us, can be capable of whether we are conscious of it or not; I have read multiple papers that entail so many interpretations that can lead to the detriment of everyone, if not everything. People have risked their lives intentionally, and some will risk others intentionally; people have become unsure of themselves and cope with sullying humors, and some will lose themselves indefinitely. My studies have seen, written from what I’ve understood for the most part, that nature and the way others nurture have attributed to the deflowering of everyone’s mindsets, the power it has to manipulate a psychological slavery that dominates everywhere — from our thoughts to our words to our actions and to ourselves.

My dear sister, it is also saddening to learn this as a writer, too, because now it has gradually clawed away my imagination to the wolves. Devoured, drones of flies remain to feed off of its bones, patches of old, moldy skin still oozing off from the bones that were once alive and kicking. But that is gone, and somehow it transforms itself into a blessing I’ve unexpectedly received. I recalled the Literary Offenses written by Mark Twain whose criticism towards Fenimore Cooper’s written work have refreshed my mind with a new outlook regarding the literary change I’ve experienced. In writing fictional stories, it is hard to fabricate a new world with complexities that should be dissimilar with that of reality, but I’ve realized that it shouldn’t be. To Twain, the writer Fenimore Cooper should have had consistent details that were sensibly depicted and portrayed so as to effortlessly create a stronger piece overall. I believed that to be the true meaning of his criticism at least, and at last I’ve welcomed in the rush of reassurance I have been longing for as a writer.

I’ve learned so much after reflecting too much within the cobwebs of my room that I also forget to go out and seek what else is there other than analyzing myself and other people. One day, I will have found the courage to read this aloud to you and actually tell you the other stories that I’ve witnessed primarily and secondarily. By typing this just for you, I feel your ghostly embrace from afar, seeing your face through this paper, and I dream death is far from reach, therefore unachievable by any mortal man which is another fantasy I would have loved to ground with my bare might. With you, I do not see a neck-strain, a knife, a rifle, a drill, or any possible kill-worthy object or force that may harm others from the most shallow and entitled of people; with you, I do not see the Aristotles or any oligarchy of feminine critics that effortlessly contest our gender being deformed or inferior with a horrifying certitude; with you, I cannot notice the right-or-wrong arguments that are clearly unethical to begin with that it becomes a vehicle for war, for a difference in opinion is intolerable and defies against all the right cultures and religions a society must conform to; with you, I do not know of the idiocy that lives in the small minds of, surprisingly, many since they think that they have a patriotic self-actualization to which they begin to further that stance with a hypocritically-worded Constitution and dare call themselves a democratic citizen of a united nation. With you, I know nothing, yet with you, always and always with you, I learn and I know everything, a good portion of it pounding my temples; but, and I hope you remember, such knowledge that I have also obtained with you and from your learned philosophies have me grateful and ecstatic for our next meeting. It is beyond words that my familial and sisterly love can be expressed,

Your Loving Sister,

K.N.