To People.

Taking a break for four minutes from everything. I love the letter challenge, but not all of it. This next one I can't think of who to write to for the world. I miss people, sure, but it's not missing so much as other emotions.

So, uh, here. I'll try this:

Dear Missed One,

I miss you, yes, but not as intensely as other people maybe would. Because missing isn't a real emotion, I don't think--it's a jumble of other emotions like longing and sadness and Oh they would like this but they're not here.

So if I ever said to you that I would miss you, it's true. I would long for you when you weren't where you usually where, and I would feel sad that I wouldn't see you for a while, and I would want to tell you things but then remember that you weren't around for me to tell you anything.

I would think of you doing your thing in your corner of the world, and get back to doing mine. Because really, what else can I say? or do? You'll be gone soon, and you're already gone for a little bit, and I hardly see you even though I want to see you so badly, so I suppose I'm so used to missing people that I don't really know how to identify the emotion anymore.

That's it,

Irene.

P.S. Blogger won't let me add any pictures, so I'll just tell you that the picture I would have added was one of a girl lying in a field of white flowers, jacket drawn up to her chin, staring at the unseen sky.

Hands, Feet, Faces, Heart.

let's be free from their uppercase restraints.

some days life is too much for words. things hit you and despair overcomes you, and you can't even figure out why. during such times, some people take comfort in their cocktails, or music, or their significant other. for me, my collection of mini-pictures are my escape. that and ignoring the shift button.

i've always wanted to try this, ignoring capitalization. it's surprisingly freeing. i feel like a child, and that's a good thing today. i love summer but i hate the complete unproductivity some days have. well not complete, i suppose. i did clean my room partially and wrote another letter. i made a lot of tea today and helped my mother with the baby and with food making while she tried to make a dress for a wedding that we may or may not be going to. i did my best to forget about the one thing but it caught up with me anyway. now i am going to make more tea and drown my sorrows in bergamot and icons. good night to you all, my imaginary audience. thanks for sticking around.

To a Friend

Dear Long-Ago Friend,
There’s not much to say. Life and circumstances pulled us apart, and now we are living separate lives. I believe it was for the best, that we did our growing as we grew apart. You found your niche and are loved. I found mine and am loved as well. The few times we do see each other, we have great conversations, but neither of us has the energy to keep up a full-time friendship. This is nice, our occasional acquaintanceship.

Really, there’s not much to say.

Fond regards,
Irene.

To One Who Has Caused Me Pain and Who I am Finding Hard to Forgive

Dear Self,
I hate you at times. You’ve caused me a lot of pain, and I wish we could forgive each other—but the hurt is too deep. You let laziness overpower you. You didn’t protect your mind from wickedness. You let your hands stop doing good, and you slept as an attitude of rebelliousness crept up on your heart.

I wish I could say that you’ve grown as a result; perhaps you have, but too little, too late. It is senior year next year, and you have slacked off, lied, and rightfully failed the past seven years. Good luck, I guess, with this last year and college—you’re going to need it in massive doses.

But you must remember that you are free. You are free, and this shouldn’t have a hold on you any longer. It only has a hold on you because you let it. So—just stop. Stop it with all the deceit and whatnot, because it’s getting annoying. Exasperating.

I know that you can do so much better. You can, and you know it yourself, but you persist in the wrongdoing. It’s disheartening to say the least. But you can change. You have changed—so just hold onto that change and who made it possible.

That’s all I have to say about that.

I still like you,
Irene.

To a Captain

Dear Captain,
Well, this is weird. I’ve never met you; I mean, I had the chance once, and another time I knew—I know—I saw you, but I’ve never met you outside my dreams and the television screen. And yet, you somehow found a space to rest inside my heart. Every time now I think of you or hear your name brought up, my heart clenches that empty place and my entire body feels empty as a result.

You weren’t my role model. Good grief, you weren’t even in my life in a real way, except for every Tuesday night from spring into summer for five years. But I grew to care about what happened to you, to every man on that show. You were real to me, and now that you have passed on, I still live. The world never stopped moving (except for a few seconds, I think, that one time), and the show continues. But I’ve learned to grind my teeth at the fragility of life.

Screw it all, but I miss being able to think that somewhere in the world, you were working your trade, one of the last oceanic cowboys, shaking your fist at the ocean while gathering your cash from her back.

I hope you’re having a good rest right now. I hope I’m not deluding myself.

Love,
Irene.

To my Father

Dear Father,

So I've written to you already, and didn't want to write to you again, but eh. The heart wants what the heart wants; sometimes it doesn't even know what the heck it wants, but goshdarnit, it's wanting something all the freaking time. But I really, really miss being able to talk to you and have you understand me. We were great at one point, a true father-daughter team completely in-sync with one another; now I am going my own direction and you continue in yours.

It sucks. That's all. And I don't know how to make it un-sucky.

With much upsetitude,
Irene.

P.S. They say that if one makes a thousand paper crane, any one wish they make will come true. If I had the energy or the paper, I would make all of them in a week; but perhaps the answer is patience and energy. Oh Chinese fortune makers, how I hate your conundrums.

To a Small Dream

Dear summer love,
I would like to meet you…next year. It’s something that I impose upon myself, and have not had the need to enforce it yet. But next year, I’ll be ready; hopefully God will look at my heart, disregard what’s best for me, and drop you into my path.

Perhaps you will have loose black hair and a craggy, pale face. Perhaps you will be crazy, crazy enough to need medication and daily walks in the sunlight. Perhaps you will know of old pie shops hidden beneath Laundromats and have secrets as deep as the sunless ocean.

But I would like to meet you, to get to know you, to be swept away by your low voice and dark hair. I would like to be by your side for three long summer months, the last ones before I have to grow up for good. I would like to listen to music by your side, to walk along a lonely beach picking up pebbles and putting them in your pockets, to help you around your house on lazy Saturday afternoons, to do all the childish things we could possibly cram into one day together.

Maybe all I need is a driver’s license, a car, and some cash, and I could pick up my best friends. We could do all that together…but still. I still would like to be able to look back on my teenage years and see you, your dark hair contrasting with the yellow folds of my last adolescent summer.

So, if you never come to me, I’ll be all right. But I wish you would.

Maybe love,
Irene.

Lovely Summer Girl

A hundred different references and remembrances rise up in my head, swirling around the current music and moments...

I fell for her in summer, my lovely summer girl;
It's summer when she smiles, I'm laughing like a child.
from Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater. It's caught in my mind, and my vision is smitten by everything yellow. It's all around me, and I am in love with it.

Airborne Toxic Event's "Innocence." I want to go out and run to it. It builds up, slow violins and guitar strings at first, and then you blink and he's screaming, sobbing, curling his curses into the air inside your ears.

Were we happier as children? As younger teenagers? Because it's great, growing up, but it hurts. I love it. I hate it. Why this--

Whatever. Writing isn't nearly as releasing as listening to music. Drums and bass blow everything out of proportion, and it feels good. Especially that song, "Innocence." So angsty but so--

Listening to it gives me so much satisfaction, like I'm biting through a thick piece of half-raw meat, juices oozing down my chin, red and wild. I feel like a berserker. A barbarian from the black forests, bows and arrows sticking out of my back, moss clinging to the soles of my feet.

Airborne Toxic Event my war cry.

To One Who Was Dying Inside

Dear Internet Friend,
Your screen name was melancholy and dramatic, a strange sight on a Christian alternative to MySpace. It caught the eye of newly-adolescent, uncertain me. You were in a band that sang offensive lyrics, and you yourself were unafraid to be offensive. I still don’t understand why you acted so childishly with me sometimes in the chat rooms, pissing off other people with our random tangents and stories, since you were nearly and adult. Perhaps it was simply because you didn’t want to grow up. I get that. But it was a good time, and you shocked me out of my temporarily comfortable corner of being good for the sake of being good.

We both stopped going on that website, and now I remember you as a face singing into a microphone, a guitar strap hugging your shoulder, your eyes closed. I never posted my picture there, but I wonder how you remember me, if you remember me at all. We were both the popular ones in those days, as popular as someone can get in the chatrooms of a relatively small networking website for Christians.

You were my first and only serious internet friend…there have been others, but I’ve shied away from them. Now I lurk, creep, and otherwise anonymously stalk blogs and profiles. It’s safer. You don’t get influenced…sometimes. And you don’t have to exert energy for correspondence—real life too often gets in the way, anyway.

Thanks for everything,
Irene.

To a Boy

Dear Boy,

There was a time when I couldn't find any words around you. Everything you did, every mention of your name brought silly thoughts to my head. I have now regressed and am living in the happy world of childhood, where the only things I run after are dandelions, fireflies, approval, and attention.

But not from you. See, at some point between where you left and I arrived, I let you go. Our friendship could have been wonderful--I saw its potential spread out before me the last time you and I talked. But the opportunity for that now is slim; and I am content with that.

You were from a time in my life when confidence was small and uncertain, when I was barely beginning to know my heart. I knew I liked guys like you: strong, dry, and different. Vodka men. Now I am a little more confident and a little more knowledgeable of my heart, and you are living your life. It's good. I'm good.

There's a storm bubbling up outside: clouds lining the sky, and thunder edging closer and closer. But I am at peace. I feel like a child, a sweet young girl who knows love only in the sweetest, most basic sense of the word.

Having wanted you at one point, and not being able to have you in the end has given me strength and supplied innocence where otherwise I would have lost it. I have learned to conceal emotions and to let them fade with time. I have learned to have peace in the middle of storms.

I am content.

Thank you,

Irene.

To a Tough One.

Dear Stranger,

Trying to write a letter to you, an unknown, is harder than I anticipated. I used to write letters to my future husband all the time; my notebooks and journals were crammed with small side-notes to someone I haven’t even met…and yet, I cannot come up with any thoughts toward you.

You’ve always been in my life, forming your first impressions and bordering my visions. Sometimes your face stays in my mind for months, imprinted by the paleness of your eyes or the upward curves of your cheekbones. Other times, when your name changes from Stranger to Acquaintance, I can’t remember your new name at all.

You’re romanticized all the time, but I find appeal only in the fact that you have the potential to become Friend instead of just Stranger. It’s what stays in my mind, even if I haven’t met you—your pale eyes tell me secrets as a friend would, and the curve of your bones speak stories of fellowship and fun.
So, don’t stay unknown, I suppose. Being a handsome stranger is one thing—a handsome friend is altogether different. Better.

Sincerely,
Irene.

To the Dreams

Dear Dreams,
You swing through my mind like misty monkeys (grabbing one part of my brain, then another) and disappear into those dark crevices where dim and sometimes wicked things reside—algebra and the table of elements, for example. Sometimes a few of you stick around and serenade my brain with your soft screeching. When you do, I am lost in the daydreams that you weave around my nerve bundles, and behind my eyelids I see your visions: lush, brilliant things that captivate me and lead me in circles.


I dwell on you and forget to live—and then you leave, and I am lost for a while. But then you return, and all is well. This cycle continues, over and over; sometimes you take the form of life-goals and aspirations, and sometimes you haunt stage four of my sleep, but my memory is strong regarding your ways, and I never fail to get caught in your gossamer webs.

They shine in the moonlight of my inner night, and I like shiny things.

You know what I think of you, my dollar-store dreams. How much I love you despite how greatly you pain me sometimes. When you reveal things about myself that I would rather have stayed hidden, I don’t know what to do. I can’t erase you, and you won’t go away unless I write you down—and I am so often afraid to do so.


But you are beautiful. Yes, indeed, you are nothing if not beautiful and vibrant, pulsing with life and feelings and colors. I look forward to you every night, regardless of what you may bring to my mind. You are a part of me, after all, and when you swing through my mind, it is like I am swinging among you, free and wild for a few hours.

I relish and cherish you.

All my love,
Irene.

To the Siblings.

Dear little girl,
I hope you get through your teenage years with aplomb. I hope the road is bumpy enough so you’ll learn, but not so bumpy that you get bitter—or broken. And I hope that you will never lose that sweetness that I still see in your eyes sometimes.

You are the most beautiful one in our family, I think, and your life is a star within you, as Rilke wrote. I wish you a life that travels far across the heavens, spreading pixie dust on all you pass, illuminating the world, and shining in the eyes of the people who look upon you.

And most importantly, don’t follow my mistakes. You are beginning to, partially, and I really, terribly hope you stay away from the fullness of the mistake.

You are growing up to be a gorgeous girl full of words and personality, and you’ll make a lot of people jealous…but don’t worry. I got your back.

Word,
Irene.

Dear once-little brother,
Oh, what to say. You’re crazy, sometimes, but I think that you are saner than most people I know. Your mind is bent around things mechanical, and the cogs and gears that turn inside your mind constantly astound me. People often don’t know what to make of you, as they felt toward all geniuses in their day, but that doesn’t stop you from searching out total individuality to the extreme.

You’re great…but you are also terrible at times. I’m beginning to avoid talking to you because of your increasingly secular outlook on life. It’s depressing to me, because I remember how bright-eyed you used to be, and the profound thoughts in your head were as captivating as the stars that we would walk beneath.

But now, I half know you, and I half don’t. Thinking about all I want to say to you drains my energy, and if I say it, will you even listen? or will you blow it off as you do all remotely moral advice, and continue to walk your own way?

I wonder what your life will be. It stretches out before you, a crooked highway that is blank and bare—put up the signs as you go by. I think, though, that your low speed level is in your favor.
Just—remember who is supposed to be at the steering wheel, I guess.

Happy trails,
Irene.

Dear littlest one,
You are the sunshine of my life, your eyes the blue skies. When you say my name in your baby slur, my heart melts. I feel like I am so grown-up carrying you around the complex, and yet you give me the strongest reminder of my youth that I have.

I hate that growing up means moving away from you, not watching you grow up, and potentially losing the chance to be the ever-present protective big sister. But I am so planning on spoiling you with my hard-earned cash.

You are smart, hilarious, and full of personality—and not even two years old. Oh, how I love watching you leap forward every day, and how I dread the passing of time.

But it’s all good. You are precious at every period of your life, and I love you like whoa.

Yours forever,
Irene.

To the Two Who Have Reversed Roles.

Dear Mama and Papa,

The roles are shifting. Papa, I used to be so close to you. You would come into my room at night, knowing what to say when I cried and not ashamed to cry yourself. Now you only talk to me seriously when prompted by Mama or when you need something…perhaps when I’m watching a game with you. I miss the old you, the one that existed before the computer took you over, before depression started weighing you down, before your job became heavy on your shoulders. Some days I think everything is better: you sit at the table with us, the television turned off, but all it takes is one word or miscommunication for you to explode.

I still love you; I love you so much, but you aren’t there, it seems. Maybe you need the escape…but we need you. How I cherish those times that you take us fishing or on field trips, when you tell us stories of Ukraine and how you guys did it over there. I wish you would devote as much time to your relationships with your children as you do to your ministry, because I am afraid that without your gentle influence in my siblings’ lives, they are headed down a road to perdition.

Mama, you are becoming my confidante. You rely on me so often, because my brother glowers at you and my sister pushes you (and the world) around. And I love you; I love your ever-rising, always-wanting-to-improve personality. I love how you can’t make jokes, and unintentionally sound racist. Your continued love for me in spite of broken trust over and over again, for Papa even when he seems to lack love, or respect, or something, is the glue that hold our family together.

You are the peacemaker, the one who never fails to ask forgiveness for things that aren’t her fault, the healer of scars and heartache, and the mender of tension. Your nerves are stretched ever tighter by homeschooling and your children’s lies but your love outlasts and outgives anyone I know. I wish I were the daughter you tell me I am, your golden child, but your continued encouragement is giving me the push I need. I’m read, I really am, to improve. Keep praying, because God hears you. How can He not? You are a precious, precious child of His. I think He loves you best.

I love you both, and find it strange how much we all have changed over these past few years. You guys are beautiful, in the way that Major Winters means it:

When the bombs are exploding around you and the enemy is coming over everything from everywhere, you hold tight to each other and to God, and dig in. You don’t give up, and your bond outshines every mine blast, every burst of machine gun fire. And eventually, when the battle is won, you come out of your foxholes, dirty and disheveled but victorious. It’s an unbreakable bond, coming together through trouble, and only the truly beautiful people are left when the dust settles down.

You both are so beautiful to me. Please, please, please stay that way.

Love,
Irene.

To One I Love.

Dear Crinkle,

I stalk you: shamefully, obsessively, denying it to everyone but my best friend, but eyes wide and heart open. There is something in the cut of your hair and the lines of your back that strikes the strings of my heart, and there are eerie similarities in the way our minds think. I love the dreamer soul in you that is restrained with numbers and brains and facts. I love that you would never cheat on your significant other; if I thought you capable of it, I wouldn’t feel so strongly.

I have raised you to the level of The Ideal. Every man suggested to me by friends, I line up with you and always, always, find him lacking. I love you—and yet I don’t. I am obsessed with your approval, and crave your attention—but not anything other than friendship. Your words and compliments give me a month’s worth of a high in one experience, and your smile makes me smile. And you’re always smiling at me, like you approve. I’ll not lie—it feels good.

Someday I hope to be loved in every way by someone like you—but not you. And because you are there, I am prevented from chasing passing fancies, like the Island Boy. They all pale in comparison to you. Perhaps my exacting standards will protect me, but that’s not my goal or desire. Right now I am content to rotate around you.

So pretty, so smart, such a waste of a young heart. What a pity, what a sham, what’s the matter with you, man? Don’t you see what’s wrong? Can’t you get it right—out of mind, and out of sight. Call on all your girls, don’t forget the boys; put a lid on all that noise.

I’m a satellite heart lost in the dark. I’m spun out so far. You stop, I start; but I’ll be true to you.

Staying true,
Irene.

To the Follower whom I Follow.

Dear Best Friend,

You make me want to be a better person. I watch as you strive to rise above the many storms of your life, and I feel a vast difference in the levels of our life experiences, but the sight of your beating wings makes me heart yearn to be so strong, as well…to rise above my own self-made molehills.

You say you have no talent, but I am in awe of your determination, your visible and hidden abilities. Your voice is gentle and low naturally, and I love hearing your tiny voice behind the music. Your writing pads across my heart, and it’s true: you are elegance itself, and it shows through your words. I love seeing you in pretty dresses, and I love worshipping next to you. I feel that, if you can raise your hands despite the hands that are trying to pull you down, then I can, too.

There are so many reasons to be jealous of you, but I can never bring myself to it. You are just so beautiful, and I am so captivated by your spirit.

This is more of a love letter than anything else, but it’s because I do love you. You have taught me how to love; you have taught me how good love can be. Before this year, my heart was sheltered in a cocoon of selfishness and disinterest. Now, through your influence and, to be honest, perhaps because of the pitfalls that you’ve gone through and have told me about, I am learning to love freely, to show emotion without restraints, and to live a life that is focused on the moments that take my breath away.

You’ve introduced me to so many good things, and when you say that you are a bad influence, I understand where your words come from…but I disagree. You open my heart and mind to things outside myself. You humble me with your own humility, your strengths and talents, and constantly show me better paths.

I just—yeah. Your friendship is a dear, special thing to me. I am trying to treasure it as I should, to treasure you as you deserve. It’s not hard to put you on a pedestal, but I want to be by your side as we go through life, to share things together, whether they are joyful or sorrowful. Better and worse apply to friendship as well as marriage, and love is only friendship set on fire.

After all, we are engaged.

Love,
Irene.

Yeah? Yeah.

I've decided to do it. The words are coming, now, at 2:45 in the morning. I won't make it; I won't make it, but I am going to try. My fingers are flying: lighting strokes on plastic letters, and the images stored up all day are pouring out.
I am unashamed of my love. I will write it out, a letter or poem at a time, and - there it will be, transformed from a cloud inside my mind to something tangible.


A poem I wrote once, in April:


Reaching Out: Part 1

If my slaved-over, soul-exposing words
can reach your heart, then the world could
never give me any promises more potent than
your smile, your open eyes.

If the sentiments exchanged would find in
you a range in which to roam, then all the soul
of hearth and home would hold no fetters on my
heart: it is gone, but not alone.

If these keystrokes or this pen could pin
your heart to mine, then all the stitched-up
pain of life would be a piece of cake, dark
wine, and moonlit mounds of pine.

Trying.

Life is weird.

Dear Best Friend.

I want to see your face, to speak so we can see heart-to-heart, to sit on a park bench somewhere and say that no matter what, I am always ready to be your friend. I will always be there for you, thinking about and praying for you.

I can’t save you from those murky depths. Perhaps my mistake was in thinking that I could, that I could find the solution for something so huge and heart-breaking.

For one who is so used to writing, I really don't want to write any of this down. Please, let us be able to talk, face-to-face.

I love you so much, Angela.
Yours truly,
Irene.