A Letter Addressed to You

A letter to the Internet, to humanity, to myself, and to the one who won’t read it:

Dearest,

I learned to distrust because you broke me like you break everything. I blamed you for everything that was going on with me because you brought hammers to my wonder and cold stares to my smiles. I learned that breaking things was easy without understanding how to create from the pieces. You gave me distraction when all I wanted was a companion. I was confined in walls until I learned to be quiet, that my smile meant nothing to others.

I learned hidden joy, to hide it and keep it safe from you, because you always destroyed my joy. Then you took over all I didn’t hide until I gave that up, too. A long, cold winter crept into my soul.

I was the one staring into oblivion. I was the one stumbling through life. I was the one others made comments about but not to, too afraid of what they might find out or too fearful of how similar they might be.

I started to run from you, and I’m fast. But you are too many! You are everywhere! All at once I realized on a frozen morning, blanketed in snow, alone, playfully in the road, that I am you, too.

I flipped a coin.

I shape shifted into another life, like we learn to do.

I raged: I am not them, they are not me. But someone who won’t read this, with a light as bright as the sun, showed me I am you, and you are terrible and wretched and unworthy of trust and diseased and rude and hurtful and ignorant and blind. We are blind.

The rotten stench of my closed off life wreaked and wafted around, filling the room, as you showed me there was no lid, there are no walls, it is just me and my distrust all along.

I begin again, from a new vantage point. With a light of honest clarity and acceptance that what makes us different and difficult is what we will or will not do, can and cannot understand, choose and choose not, that we are limited and unlimited at the same time. I look inwards, now, to dispel the clouds of doubt and mistrust in order to shine a light that can’t be taken back.

From the peak of ignorance I descend into the deep dark unknown depths of trust, armed with a light that cannot be extinguished.

Yours,

J.S. Ellis