letter from consciousness

Saving you is a way to save myself.

There were times when I was frightened with being empty. Empty means I have no solid core. I imagine myself functioning like a sponge, in which is capable of absorbing all those residues that left by other people. Sponge only has meaning when it is capable of permeating. Therefore, I become anxious when it's empty. I'll urgently pull things as fillers, whether they make sense or not. I become obsessed with it for awhile. Walking on this heavily congested earth like a wanderer searching for purpose. I am searching for something like sorrow, so I am able to breaking it down into small particles I could hold with my palms. Maybe it explains my attachment with everything that is complicated and ruined. Somehow, it almost looks like a wonderful illness that makes you sick with excitement. As if I am a sage without any heroes to guide.

I write their stories in a journal exhibited in my consciousness, drafting them down until they become a pattern I slowly recognize. To me, writing has its own merits. If reading is a cure for loneliness, writing is like a suplemen that strengthen the soul, moving its muscles, making it easier to breathe. After such a long time and couples of meetings with people, I recognize these patterns as some sort of formula I recall again and again. And just like that, my attachment slowly feels like a thread tied to my body. It's no more wonderful for my thirsty self. I am not kind. I am a pathetic fool.

At first, I write beautiful words and serve it to you as poems. I thought what I gave you was art, a relief for the grieving soul. But I doubt my art is ever supposed to make you feel something. Instead, it is to make me feel something. And so, these poems are actually written for me. I see you, I listen to you, and I am here writing your stories on my blank journal. Often times I also learn from you. Now who inspires this idiotic-sage-impersonate if not you, my friend?

I wish you happiness from the depth of my heart. I truly do. I wish for your agony to be wiped away and never coming back. But how do I apologize for treating your wounds so ingenuine just for the sake of easing my worthless existence? This whole time my words are nothing but flattery, my friend. I am betraying you, yet I still have the audacity to be scared when you no longer find pleasure in them.

These days I let the void stays in me for awhile while I sit in this congested world. I am only a sponge, still, who witnesses and absorbs. But, my friend, maybe I start to growing tired of it as I age. Like those fictional characters from the 18th become immortal with their issues, I've also decided to befriend mine. These days I understand that my loneliness is not lonely, it exists no matter which era. It feels brazenly reassuring how this is not my animosity with life, but just a part of being a sad human. In the other hand, I find this strange cross-centuries camaraderie with these creators and their creatures. We're lonely together!

I've slowly stopped longing for an epilogue, my friend. My curiosity turns on what happened after the epilogue. Perhaps, a never-ending story? Yes... That's right. A story about eternity. If I finally reach that, maybe I don't need to long for anything to fill this emptiness. I don't need to carry this loneliness, or this helplessness. I don't have to write a journal anymore, and you don't have to fill the blank anymore. Maybe my flattery finally lost its value for something greater than everything I could offer. And that should be the moment I stop with my wandering, and appear only as the unusable-sponge I am.

- 2nd letter