Re: Your letter dated August 25, 1991
January 11, 2013
Dear Charlie,
I am writing back to you because whoever she is, she was right: i do listen and understand. Well, I try to, at least. And I didn't try to sleep with that person at that party. Sure I could have slept with that person. Although thinking about it more, I don't think I could have had, even if I had wanted to. But don't worry. I won't try to figure out who she is, or who you are. And don't think twice about keeping the names generic; anonymity has its place and serves a purpose. And since you haven't enclosed a return address, I know you will never read this. But that's okay. Honest.
Charlie, those people whom you seek do exist. Just like you, we all need someone out there who listens and understands, and who doesn't try to sleep with people even if they could have. So know, Charlie, know!
All people are alive! Though many do take it for granted. Even I am guilty of not appreciating what being alive means. Gosh, I do hope other people look to me for strength and friendship, as you've heard. I hope you'll do the same, and I'll in turn look to you.
So, I'll be a witness to your life. In turn, I'll testify about mine: my life when I was your age and my life now. (As an aside: it's funny, looking back at the date of your letter, I realize we're the same age now. I wonder if I had come across your letter then, would my life be different now?) So let's listen to one another. You'll know that I too am both happy and sad. Maybe then we can both crack the mystery of this paradox.
A friend of mine, L, once made an innocuous comment, "People are social animals. We need each other." She's right, of course. Our earliest formative years are with our family. We are who we are because of our family. There's no doubt in my mind that this is true. But I won't go into this whole debate of nurture vs. nature, because our family is the beginning of nurture as well as nature. So, in a way what I'm saying is I also do think of my family as a reason for me being this way.
Anyways, I'm sorry about your friend, Michael. To have lost someone important to you in such a horrific and sad way, I can't imagine. Yet reading about how your family rallied to you made me think that you are fortunate. I guess, this is your first example of your inner paradox. Let me pause a moment and gather my thoughts about my own family and my loss. When I look back to when I lived in Korea, my family felt big: even though it was just my mom and me in an old house, there were my aunts and uncles, and my many cousins, who lived a short way away, and there was my dad who came at least once a month to visit us from Japan. My family was bigger than the four walls around my house. But back when I was your age, my family consisted of my mom and my grandmother living within the confines of a small one bedroom apartment in New York.
I'll share more later, I hope... It's getting really late now. And let me confess why I'm writing back to you, Charlie: the reason I write back is because I have been stuck for far too many years: I've worked at a dead end job for over five years, and now have been unemployed for two; furthermore I've been hiding from and lying to my parents for many more years than that. I want to make a change, I need to make a change. But I'm really afraid of the tomorrows.
Love always,
Friend
