A Letter To Myself

Dear me,

God, what do I even say? Things have been so crazy that I’ve tried everything to forget what’s happening around me. I’ve tried Netflix, Youtube, books, alcohol- well, not alcohol. That was a joke. It wasn’t even a good joke.

See, this virus has done much more than just make me bored. It’s made me insane. It’s made me lose touch with what is real and what is in my dreams. Am I even awake as I type this letter? I can’t be sure. I’ve had dreams these past few weeks where I complete schoolwork, and then I wake up and find out that I had actually done none of it. Is writing this letter one of those occasions?

I can’t believe that we’re living in history. All of us, as one, are writing history through the numbers of sick and dead. Through the economic shut-down. Through the panic and sheer weight of everything. We are in history. The sad part is that my name won’t be mentioned. I am just another number in the statistics of this virus. One number in the sea of people that are affected by this virus. I am but a number.

I’m hoping you read this when it’s over. I’m hoping that the numbers have stopped increasing and that you are enjoying life without the constant reminder of death around you. It seems so ironic that all of this is happening in the spring. While the outside world is growing and creating new life, we humans are stuck indoors and dropping like flies from a dumb virus. Sorry. I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. It is disrespectful, and I know it. I’m just bitter at how I can’t fully enjoy flowers blooming because it’s still winter for us. We’re asleep while the rest of the world is awake and alive. It’s stupid. I know stupid isn’t a great word to use to describe something, but it is the first word that comes to mind when I think about the coronavirus. Dumb. Stupid. Ridiculous. I guess I’m angry.

More than that, I’m scared. Going into this quarantine was easy. I just holed up in my room and watched YouTube until 3 AM. I practically did that already. But now that things are starting to reopen, I’m scared that I’ll have forgotten how to talk to people. Like, what do I even say to start a conversation? I can’t remember. It’s been too long.

I’ll just have to see what the future holds.

I’m not exactly sure why I decided to write you a letter. After all, you are me, but it just felt right to be telling myself everything that I feel. I have a terrible memory, after all, and I’m sure you can barely even remember writing this. You did. I am proof of that.

I had an idea that I wanted to write about, but it seems to have slipped my mind. I did, however, have one thing that was super important that I remind you of. It’s sad, but I think it’s important to remember it.

Do you remember that one conversation we had with Dad? It went something like this: (I’m about to go full-out writer mode. Get ready.)

I was sitting in the dining room, looking down at my phone. Dad walked into the room and said, “I’m sure you’ve already thought about this, but I wanted your opinion.”

I just looked up from where I was sitting. My mind registered what he said, but nothing else. I was blank.

He continued, “You will probably never see any of your senior friends ever again. They’ll go off to college and start their own lives, and you’ll never meet those people in your life again. What do you think about that?”

I stared at him with my mouth hanging open because he was wrong. I hadn’t thought about it. Sure, I understood that I wasn’t going back to school for the rest of the semester, but all of what that meant hadn’t sunk in. Maybe I hadn’t wanted it to.

“No. I didn’t think about that at all. Oh my God, that’s crazy.” I ran my hands through my hair. My mind was running a thousand miles a minute.

Dad looked at me with a confused smile, “Really? I thought that would be all you would be thinking about.”

“It should have been.” I just stared at the wall and felt numbness creep into my mind. How could I forget something that important? I never even got the chance to say goodbye to them. None of them.

Do you remember that? It’s one of those memories that sticks out when I think about what’s affected me the most. The virus has made me lose myself in nothingness. I stare at TikToks and don’t feel anything. I read books, watch movies, and write stories that make no sense to anyone except myself. I’ve done this before, especially during uneventful summers, but this quarantine has made me realize that if I don’t want to face reality, I will lock my thoughts up in other people’s stories in order to drown out my own story. It’s depressing, I know. I need to face the facts. Life isn’t great right now. It isn’t great for anybody. We’re all trapped in this endless winter-that-isn’t-winter, and I’m sick of feeling helpless to what’s happening. I’m sick of those people that hoard supplies and ignore health protocols by meeting up with friends and not washing their hands after going places. They are the reason why so many people are suffering. That, and the fact that our government acted too slowly to stop the spread of the virus.

I’m just in an angry mood while I’m writing this letter. It happens to the best of us, I know.

I want to keep writing because I know you’ll enjoy reading this in the future. You always enjoy reading your old work to see how you have improved and how you’ve changed. I find that admiring. Yes, future me, I am admiring you. It’s called self-love. Get with the program.

I wanted to fill this letter with so many jokes that you wouldn’t know what to do other than laugh, but I ended up talking about all of the depressing stuff in my life. My bad. I guess it’s not too late to start joking around. I can talk about some of the funny TikToks I’ve watched recently. The only problem is that I’m having a hard time remembering a single one. Even if I did, I couldn’t properly convey how funny that TikTok was to me, and by the time you’re reading this, it would be too old to laugh at. Geez, why am I so bad at writing funny things? I need to loosen up.

Hey, I know what I can write about.

I can write about what my music side has been up to. (By “music side,” I mean the part of my life that is dedicated to music, duh.) I’ve been having weekly Zoom meetings with my flute teacher, Alicia. She’s nice. You’re probably still taking lessons from her. If you’re not, then how far in the future are you? Anyways, I’ve been practicing double tonguing on the flute. However, for the last month or so, I’ve had a hard time singing or playing because of my dumb cough (which I hope you’re not dealing with while you’re reading this), so I started learning some piano pieces to mix things up and give my lungs a break. You don’t need to breathe deeply to practice piano. You just need eyes that can read multiple notes at once. That is a skill I’m not so great at. You know this all too well, of course. I wonder if you’re still playing the occasional piano piece? I should record myself playing to track my progress. I won’t though, because I am a lazy piece of sh-

Ahem. Stuff. I was going to say stuff.

The point is, I have actually enjoyed practicing recently, which is something I never enjoyed doing until quarantine. Maybe something good has come out of this after all? I hope so. I need it to be so.

What to talk about…

We’ve had several storms, and our fence fell down. It’s still broken even as I type this. (I’m typing this on Friday, May 15, if that helps you at all.) I’m adding this next story on Saturday, May 16 of this year. This year being 2020, in case you forgot.

I was going to end this quickly, but I realized I haven’t gotten to talk about a major event that might be happening on Monday. We might be getting a dog! Of course, you already know if it happened or not. That’s exciting to think about.

If you don’t remember the details, let me jog your memory. Dad was set on getting a poodle for a long time and tried to get the whole family on board. Of course, he realized after about a month of fawning after this fancy dog breed that they are freaking expensive to take care of- especially grooming. So, I’m not sure how this happened, but we decided to get a rough collie. So Dad emailed, like, five different collie breeders to ask about what dogs were available, and we found a dog named Jonie that we wanted to co-own. However, when my dad and brother went to the city where they would pick up the dog, they found another collie breeder on their way back, and we had our hearts set on one of their dogs, Sadie. She was super sweet, although I only got to see her over a FaceTime call, and now Mom and my other sibling just left for the city to (hopefully) bring Sadie home. Sadie is our little miracle dog! Out of all of this pain and struggle, something good happened. Well, I hope it happened. Or will happen. You know what happened, at least. It’s kind of like a spoiler for life, isn’t it?

I just realized that I’ve basically been treating this letter like a diary entry. Sorry about that. I just wanted to talk about what’s been going on and how this virus has changed things because I know for a fact that you won’t be able to remember all of these details without my help. So, I guess I should say you’re welcome.

How does one end a project/letter to oneself without it sounding conceited or rushed? I have no clue. Why am I answering all of the questions I type? Also no clue. Do I need to stop typing before I develop arthritis and regret all of the decisions I’ve made in life? Definitely.

So, see you around, me. It’s been nice “talking” to you.

Sincerely,

Me