Hey you.
If you’re reading this, well, hello. I hope that 2021, for all its trials and tribulations, has been kind to you. Life is distressingly short, and for us to spend some of the very few years of our lives in this situation makes me very sad. How many missed opportunities, lost moments, unsaid words and unfulfilled wishes and hugs have we had over the past year?
Those of you who have spent significant amounts of time around me will know that I love writing letters. They are one of the only ways in which I find myself able to actually express my emotions in a semi-coherent manner, because I have all the time in the world to reflect on my words and find the perfect ones, in a way that I am unable to do so in daily conversation. Indeed, I express my gratitude, affection, sorrow and happiness in letters to those people I care for. This is one, of sorts, to the people who are reading this.
Perhaps some of you will also know that beneath my upbeat, smiling and laughing facade that I am a rather introverted, introspective person, prone to melancholic rumination; someone who finds it easier to put words to the conflict of other people than my own. It is a fault of mine that I, in no way, encourage in other people. Please, if there is something on your mind, there is always someone open to listening to it. Even if it is just me. Do not sit alone and stew on it.
With that in mind, I have spent the past month or so in deep introspection. Some of you may have noticed I have been less talkative, or that there’s been a weird part of me that hasn’t been completely THERE. I’m sorry, and I’m especially sorry if it has worried you. I have also been busy, preparing to leave to go overseas for university and helping my father with work before I am no longer as free to do so. A lot of it has been melancholic, nostalgic, and at times downright pretentious; yet more of it has brought me to laughter, to tears, to late nights awake and wishing for dawn.
It is a weird feeling, leaving behind what you know. I should be used to it, considering I’ve had years to prepare myself mentally for this moment. However, running through it in your mind and experiencing it firsthand are vastly different propositions. This past month in general has been one of the most challenging I’ve had, mentally and physically. However, the past 2 weeks have been some of the happiest I’ve had, in no small part thanks to the people involved in my life (especially the person who decided being carsick was worth it since they were having fun talking, thank you. You’ve brought me spades of joy and fun, to no end). I grew up a very isolated child, thrust into social situations for the benefit of adults but with little thought given to my enjoyment of such situations. I learnt very early on the importance and positives of being able to put on a mask, to chat with people on a surface level whilst never quite revealing what you actually thought. That same skill has left me, at 19, a horribly closed off person who has trouble voicing my real emotions.
And I realise that I do not tell all of you that I love you enough. Genuinely, if the past month has taught me anything, it’s how much you all mean to me. From school, to sport, to activities, to inside jokes, to watching movies together, to music and to books, each and every one of you has shaped me and my experience of the world in the past few years to no end. Regardless of if we briefly shared laughter, if we text endlessly for days on end, if we no longer speak the way we used to - every single one of you are an integral part of the most challenging years of my life. I would like to think I’ve grown a lot in the past few years, and if you spent that time with me and around me, thank you. You’ve all been gems. If I could, I’d give everyone who welcomes it a hug.
Growing up is difficult. It hurts, and it’s foreign, and to some extent we all experience it slightly differently and have to go through parts of it alone. Growing up and relearning yourself is even tougher - to think that you haven’t met every version of yourself yet. How daunting; how exciting? I think the difficulty I have with it, personally, is that nothing is forever. Much as I wish what I know of me, of the people I love, of the world, would forever stay the way it is, I realise it is futile. And maybe it’s that futile resistance to the endless change of the world that has led me to be so upset about the thought of leaving the place I’ve known behind. Some of you may have heard me describe my house as a place that doesn’t feel like home; but that is not entirely accurate. It somehow feels, simultaneously, like both home and a completely foreign place. And leaving it behind, as much as I looked forward to it, is also difficult. Maybe it says something about me that I am so resistant to leaving it and is a metaphor about growing up. I hate the temporary, yet I am faced with the fact that practically everything about the world I so love is temporary.
The world is scary. As it currently is, the world is no different to the dark belly of some cavernous beast that is slumbering, but could so easily swallow you whole if it so wished. And I think, to some extent, this letter is me reaching out my arms and hoping that you will reach back and grasp them. The world is scary. The world is exciting. But most of all, the world has you, and with you here, it’s not nearly as bad as it seems to me when I am alone. Thank you. This letter, insofar as it resembles one, is me calling out to all of you, and telling you thank you. That I love you. That we have come this far, and will keep going. That the road, dark and twisting and treacherous and uncertain as it may be, is less lonely with you. That I will be by your side. That I’ve outgrown my childhood, yet that I am simultaneously not ready to relinquish it. But I must.
I spent the last 2 weeks with a pledge to myself, to take at least a photo a day of something beautiful up until the day I left Malaysia behind. In some ways, it was sheer nostalgia and ridiculousness; in others, it was a form of meditating on the time I’ve had and the people I’ve met and things I’ve seen. And my conclusion from that is this: life is filled with beautiful things and places, hidden in our everyday lives. Life is filled with love, and opportunities, and colours and warmth and people. It’s made me hopeful for my future, for the first time in a long time. Let’s hope it lasts.
To all of you, this is not goodbye, it’s see you later. It’s “I love you”, and it’s “I stand with you”, and it’s “I’m here for you”, and it’s “you can cry into my shirt, because I like soggy shirts”. Thank you for being a part of my beautiful and complicated journey so far, and may fate be kind enough to let us meet again, where we are free to compare stories and I may give you a hug again.
Love,
Leo.