Letters Never Sent - Scathing Truths Never Shared with the Recipient

Letter Details: Me

Category: Random Rants

Description: A bit of a long conversation I'll never have out loud.

As long as you have value to yourself, it doesn’t matter what other people think. I learned that particular lesson a little too late. I used to be a pretty happy person for real. But I never was good at making friends. I had plenty of faith in myself and my own worth, but it distressed me sometimes that other people could not see that I was just as wonderful as anyone else.

So, I spent all my time tearing myself down and rebuilding myself in a pale mockery of my old self, full of sarcasm and bitterness. Now I have friends, and I really do love my friends. But I feel sometimes as though all the qualities that draw people to me now are products of my self-hate and constant reminders that I gave up the parts of myself I loved most about me in order to attract the attention of those who never used to care.

I have succeeded in becoming someone else and I miss myself desperately. I am consumed with thoughts of me, and cannot give my new friends the thought and consideration they deserve. They are wonderful, beautiful people, who deserve someone better than me, but they chose to put some small part of their happiness in my hands, and I’m so f***ing scared. I’m so f***ing scared and so f***ing weak. I want to hide behind my books, the fortresses that once protected me so well. I want to read of other lands and bright heroes and great deeds and find myself in their pages once more.

Sadly though, I don’t read very much anymore. I used to get a lot of enjoyment out of books, and I even tried to write a few small things of my own every so often. I wasn’t great at it, but I tried and I liked it and it made me feel good. I could forget about the s*** in the world and entertain myself. Now I can hardly concentrate on books long enough to get really into them. My mind is too consumed with small, insignificant worries about me to concentrate on a book or a story of my own. Even the short story I showed you is a few years old, now.

Music is not as colorful as it used to be. I used to be able to see such wonderful pictures and beautiful, vibrant colors in my music. Now I have to close my eyes and really concentrate to see anything because my head is filled with Things. Stupid little things. Things like: am I pretty? Do people like me? Will they leave me if they knew I hate hate hate everything sometimes? Would they still have noticed me if I’d still been the quite girl who always had a book at hand? Am I alone? Are they watching me? Are they judging me? Am I falling short? All the crowding hate and fear and worry pushes away the music and the color, and just makes me angry.

I like to be alone sometimes, and I get so angry sometimes. I’ve always had a propensity for dramatics when angry, but now I add sarcasm and biting indifference or derision to my angry words. My goal in anger used to be just getting rid of feeling of annoyance and hurt, and once I was over it I was fine. Now my goal when I get angry is to HURT. I want to make people feel the pain I feel. I want them to feel empty and brittle and ALONE. I want to rid myself of feelings not by bleeding myself dry in some silly teen angst phase, but by shoving them down the throat of whoever I place my anger on, whether deserved or not. Sometimes I hate people, hate my friends, hate my family, and hate you too. I want to smash things and break things and carve my hate into the world in a way that will last forever.

I hate this. I hate this sarcasm I’ve built up. I can make others and myself laugh, and it is real laughter. But there is a part of me that only looks at the constant sarcasm with disgust. I am bitter and rude and I smile as I cut viciously at the world with my mocking words. I look at myself with contempt, too, and how f***ed up is that? I cannot think something nice about myself without turning it bad somehow.

I can still wear bright colors and laugh and dance and play. But I do not love much anymore.

There is a part of me that wishes I could be honest again. There is a part of me that missing being able to love myself without guilt. There is a part of me that misses laughing for deep, sincere joy, instead of this mocking scorn I direct at the world. I feel almost unemotional sometimes, even when I’m raging and hating. I can’t find the source, though I’ve torn myself apart trying to find it. And every time I laugh at my own cruelty, I add another painful cut to own sense of self and sense of self-worth.

I am still happy sometimes, and I still have my rock solid core of self-worth. I still love my family, and I do love the friends I have made. I would not give up the friends I have made in the past two years for anything, even though they are the friends I have made at the point in my life when I feel most lost, most unsure of myself, most fake and masked. I still enjoy small things like popsicles and sunshine and rain. And sometimes I can still be truly and perfectly happy over small, significant things. I can still be happy to do nice things for my family. I can enjoy the pointless conversations I have with friends, and even though they are part of the confused me I would like to keep them in my attempt to go back to happy me.

A few of my experimental ventures into openness and proper friendliness went rather well, and perhaps did make me a better person. And when I’m feeling good, I feel wonderful. My good moods feel so worth anything that came before, and last year at the beginning of the year, I was so happy that I did not regret anything or want to change anything in my past. I did not dream of fairy tales and adventures, because I was having a lovely adventure of my own and meeting the most wonderful people. I dreamt of my own life and saw a bright future ahead.

But I forgot that I used to see a bright future ahead of myself without stressing about the judgment of others and telling myself I wasn’t worth much. I used to feel big and important in my own skin. Every so often I could still make decent friends, and I always had my family. But merely decent friends had not been enough for me. I wanted an adventure and people I could tell anything to, who would be there forever in a way that even family cannot be. I got so caught up in being jealous of others that I forgot how much I liked myself. I stopped remembering I was worth something in my own right and decided to become someone else so that I could have the life I wanted. I convinced myself that I could only have friends and other outward signs of success if I WAS someone else.

I cannot hold onto this self I made. I will explode, or implode, or stab myself to get the blackness out. I have to find the path back to me, but I’m so f***ing scared. I am lost and scared and more alone than I ever used to feel before I had so many people in my life. Even the happy place I imagine in my mind when I need it is growing cold and distant and hard to see.

I’m scared to tell you this out loud. Not because I think you will understand and feel unwanted pity. No, I am scared to tell you this out loud because I am so desperately afraid that you will not understand. I am so desperately scared that you will look at me with that uncomprehending, sad look, and blame yourself somehow. I am so scared that you will not hear what I am saying and I will get so mad at you.

So instead, this will be a Letter Never Sent. Maybe you will see it someday, and understand and bring it up in conversation. Maybe I am underestimating you because I am so confused in my own head I cannot even begin to comprehend how I sound to others, how I sound to you. But I have never been brave, and I am far too scared to tell you how I feel now.