To You

Hey, it’s so nice to meet you. 

I wondered how I should write this letter. There’s so much I want to say, so much I hold and feel at the same time.

And then I heard: 

Tell the truth. Tell the truth. Tell the truth. 

So here goes the truth. 

I kept hoping one day, someone will swoop in and save me, but it took years, especially this year, to realize that until I could save myself, you won’t ever be who I hoped for. 

It’s been quite a rough year. 2019 was filled with misery, heartbreak, depression, sickness, and despair beyond compare. But it had also been a year of immense growth and piercing insight. 

“If you want change, you must invite chaos.” 

2019 was absolutely chaotic! I felt as though I had shed layers and layers of skin, left transformed by each soul-crushing, heart-wrenching discovery and defeat. But I didn’t turn into someone new. I had transformed into someone familiar. Someone who was always there for me — you. 

You see, I wasn’t who I want to be yet, so I couldn’t meet who I want yet. 

I spent the last year looking for and dating men who weren’t truly in sync with me because my insecurities had a louder voice. I felt that deep down, I didn’t deserve a “normal” or “secure” man. That because of my disability and my tumultuous, late-to-rise success, I somehow only deserved to date other burdensome men, whose immaturity and past possibly echoed my own - fraught with problems, struggles, and even more insecurities and an astounding lack of self-awareness. 

But of course, I stand here today with this love letter not to weep about the past, but to say, I am enough for you. 

I want you to know that the woman standing before you emerged from darkness and fire, and that she bears many scars. And that by loving herself, she is loving you. I want you to know that the light she holds doesn’t come from a place of ease, doesn’t come from simple positivity. 

I had to work every single second, to fight with gritted teeth, to believe with a broken heart, in order to keep the light on. 

With the light on, I can see clearly now. It’s hindsight 2020 in 2020, eh? 

“If you want something you’ve never had before, you better be prepared to do something you’ve never done before.” 

I’ve been alone in my own presence and seen my mistakes and those of others. For the first time in my life, I don’t feel a void. I don’t feel the need to satisfy an inexplicable urge nor to quench solitude with mediocrity and “well, it’s still better than being single.” 

In this solitude, I realized I should not burden you with my lack of trust coming out of a betrayal, so I will patiently let grace arrive with time. You can stay in a relationship without love, but you can’t ever stay in a relationship without trust. Another person has never been the way out. The only way out is in. 

But I also know, if you are truly you, you’ll work through it with me and understand that scars can still ache and bother sometimes. But the pain, it passes. It’ll pass because everyone is there for me. I’m there for me. 

I’ve come to see, in the great - albeit clumsy - love from my family, that my constant desire to learn and grow has helped them grow, too. Our old, standoffish, irreconcilable dynamic no longer exists because I continue to learn and work on my communication skills, and put effort and deliberate thought into seeing all sides of the story. My family stood by me, offered to fly 17 hours to be by my side and take care of me through dark times. We have never been more honest with each other until this year, and I have never been more proud to hear my parents say, “You’ve truly grown up. It’s like you’re the adult of the family now.” 

I’ve come to see, in my remarkable friends and my second family who encourage me, light the candle of hope when I’m down in the abyss, that it is who I am, whom I’ve been, that kept us together in this deep and meaningful friendship. We can open our hearts completely, fall apart and be vulnerable entirely, while trusting in each other to be there to pick up the pieces. We are wholly accepted, and each one of us only wants the best for each other, unselfishly. 

I am loved. I am enough. 

I am also a work in progress, and will likely always be a work in progress because self-improvement never stops, because learning is the work of a lifetime. And I know you will understand because you’re a part of me, you’ll value self-improvement and know the work behind it all. 

Some suppress their nature in order to go on, while others remain unaccountable for self-preservation. And I will do neither. I love deep, and I don’t plan on changing that aspect of myself, go against who I am. The last year made it even more clear to me how important it is to be kind and honest. After all, it’s so easy to lie and run than to stand and fight; it’s so easy to give up than to persevere. And it’s so much easier to be bitter, powerless, and resentful at the tidal of events seemingly out of control. But that’s not me. That has never been me. Nothing worth its salt ever comes easy. So I will always tell the truth because, hey, I’m not easy. 

It is in every ounce of effort, every attempt to try again, every choice that’s hard but right, every time I hear “put in the work,” that I fell in love with you. 

To you, I will always be kind and always be honest. I won’t ever forget what we went through, how we grew amidst the rubble, how vigorously and intentionally we worked, and how we found each other behind the tears.

As you said, “There’s nothing to be afraid of. All in good time.” 

In the future I trust, because I trust me, and the future is me, is us. 

Love,

Your reflection

ThoughtsRai HsuComment