I remain an idiot so that the people around me can be intelligent.

April 06, 2024

Dearest Lara 🌻

I am writing this letter with the intent of wanting to know you better - as a person and as a friend.

Getting to know a person is sort of like reading a book. There's the title, the cover page, the table of contents, the prologue, and the chapters. There's a beginning and an end. Not all stories begin happily: some start somber while others welcome you with distraught and disturbance. This is how my story started. I prefaced the story of my life with the tragedies my family suffered when I was a young child. Now that we live a life of comfort, I do not take every single thing that we have for granted: good food on the table, good shelter, good entertainment, enough clothes to live by, a happy marriage, a happy brother, a happy me, and a happy life.

When I saw your Facebook posts, the depressive atmosphere and melancholic thought that came with them caught my attention as I had suffered a similar state in my life when I wanted to kill myself and erase my life off of the face of the earth. Although, I did not want to be selfish and think of myself alone. I've given it some thought-the implications and consequences of my death. I've thought about how my Father would feel abroad if he heard of the news that his son had killed himself. My Mother, suffering from panic attacks, episodic anxiety, and depression, might cry for days. My brother who doesn't know better might be confused why his brother is laying down on the floor cold and lifeless.

I've given it a lot of thought and I decided not to kill myself. I continued to live, I poured all of my pain and suffering through writing, continued my studies, picked up where I left off (because I was close to failing all of my courses back then), and strengthened myself. Now, I am a teacher at St. Joseph Institute of Dingras. Still existential in nature, quite pessimistic in thought, but overall still somehow optimistically stoic despite the challenges I face in my life.

As for you, I have never encountered a person of your caliber. A beauty like no other, intelligence you don't see from other people that often, a talent that amazes me to no end, and the happiness you bring with every encounter I have with you and every conversation that we share on a random afternoon or on a cold night, perhaps, on a sunny morning. These things I have felt with your presence, I haven't quite felt in such a long time. Depravity of love from the opposite gender-God has cursed man to find his other half his entire life. My efforts lately have quite been futile, but for every message you leave, I see a light in the tunnel, a ray of sunlight in a dark room: the piece that's been missing from my soul for quite a long time. Maybe it's her that might fill in the empty void that I've been long so carrying in my life. She might ease the burdens I feel, and share what little life we have in this world.

I understand the reality of the situation: a lost partner, distractions to no end not satiating your desire for escapism, a foggy mind, a broken heart, and a shattered soul. It's too much for you. It's too much to bear. You can't handle all of it. And now, there's this random person that comes into your life wanting to fix the broken pieces... but you so desperately to refuse his help because, in the first place, you did not ask for it despite knowing that there is a chance that everything will be alright in the end. However, the trauma that love has left was all too much to bear. There is no hint of optimism left in the chambers of your delicate soul.

But... but, if you let me stay, I can promise you one thing and one thing. I can promise to remain true to myself whatever happens, whatever consequences my actions will carry, and I will be here as a cornerstone for your fragile soul. If you need someone to lean on, I will be a pedestal for your injured knees. If you need someone to talk to, I will lend an ear. And if you need someone to look at you, my eyes are open for the truth.

People are in nature cursed to find someone else to fill in the empty void in their heart. That is the curse of the living and breathing human beings. That is the blind will that drives us to seek for the person that might complete us. In the end, we all turn to dust, for dust we are and in dust we shall return. Before that, all we want to do is to live a life of contentment and happiness. Don't we?

P.S. I am still on the prologue, yet, you're already closing the book for me. Don't you want to know what happens in the next few chapters?