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[thebulgariancapitalletters-blog]

April 22, 2020

My dearest S,

When I was wrapping up my first letter to you, I disclosed to you that it feels like I’ve found myself unable to capture the things I’ve been meaning to say through letters.

I was staring intently on sentences haphazardly unfinished, thinking of ways on how to swim across the sea. With no ending in mind, I kept on searching for land so I can finally put my journey to a close, only to be kept on being pummeled by one enormous wave of loss of words after another.

“Maybe you've developed muscle in writing for work that your creative writing muscle has atrophied a bit,” you said.

“You need exercise.”

When you write for a living, everything becomes second nature. The research, the structure, the tone, they’ve already been predetermined in your head long before you even started doing your assignment for the day. You cannot use writer’s block as an excuse because you already know how to approach a certain topic from years of experience.

And this is possibly why I got disconnected with the other writer in me. I no longer take the time to pause and give it the chance to take over and allow me to confront my most personal ideas.

To help me get started, you told me to write a letter to my future self about us being on the verge of a new normal “and how life was before this huge change.” You really knew how to say the right words at the right time.

Since it was your idea, I would like you to read this letter before my future self even sees it. In case I forget about it, please remind me of this point in our lives:

D,

I am writing this from my cozy studio in Mandaluyong, which has been my home for close to two years now. I do not know anything about the future so I am uncertain if you have already given up on this tiny apartment. But knowing me, I know you wouldn’t either. Or maybe you’ve gone back to Makati, as what I’ve been trying to plan for the longest time.

In this time of uncertainty and looming sea change, my friends have been this unreliable and wobbly office chair (don’t worry, I’ll get one after the quarantine has been lifted), this precarious table gifted to me on Christmas 2018, my seven-year old laptop, and these mustard walls that are somehow comforting. Are you curious if I have finally talked to them? You both know you and I merely joke about it but I never did.

I may have referred to parts of my room as friends but they’re anything but. I have important people in my life to help me stay hinged during this time. They’re the few ones that make this isolation much more tolerable. If there is anything I’ve learned from being confined here for more than a month, it’s the value of connections of you have with people and why you should NEVER take them for granted.

Your friends and family are always just a phone call away. If there’s anything you have learned, it’s that it won’t hurt to call them almost every single day. Listen to their voice. Hear their stories with intent. Talk to them about anything. You don’t have to relegate them to your weekend life. I hope that future me (read: you, and yes, I can be condescending to me/you too) has already learned this.

If there is another lesson I hope you can learn from this, it’s this: listen to your own heartbeat, write the moment a germ infects your head and write until that well has been exhausted, sing and sing every song out loud, scream into the void, wear sunscreen, put lotion on your elbows (trust me on this), buy that bike, ride that bike, feel the cold rush of wind and listen to the violent rush of wind as you ride from one place to another, read shampoo bottles (and avoid the ones with sulfate so you can be kind to your hair), accept the fact that people lie and cheat and steal and find peace in it without letting it corrupt you, enjoy the tension with every picturesque thought from your own private mental theater then forget it, be kind to people—especially to yourself.

Imagine the most complex freeform jazz piece ever and pirouette with the words un your head until the nausea becomes so unbearable that your pen starts to vomit, hoping that you can create something intelligible.

Let your love grow tall. Never forget that romantic love isn’t the only one of its kind.

Stare into the sun until your corneas burn and all that’s left to see is the afterimage of phantom sun in your mind.

Embrace every emotion, even the negative ones, as they are part of your humanity.

Dance around a collapsing star until you eventually come crashing down and reach the point of no return.

Smile. Enjoy life right down to its precious milliseconds.

Live as if a demon appeared in front of you one day and condemned you to live the same life over and over again up to the tiniest, most irrelevant details. Nietzsche called it “amor fati” or the love of one’s fate.

Live. Let your heart be your compass and follow where it’s pointed.

I honestly don’t know what will happen in the future, and to put it frankly, I don’t want to know. Wherever you are right now, whatever you’re doing, I’m sure you’re doing alright. I’ll get there at my own pace, with every thud coming from my chest telling me my pace. Truth be told, I’m writing this with a decadent heartbeat right now and I don’t even know why.

I just hope these realizations I’ve had are not in vain and you’re still being true to yourself. Or is it will not be? Who cares?

See you, gunslinger.

So far, so good. I feel better after writing this, especially when I finished the second half of the letter to myself. I think I’m getting my groove back and I can hear the screaming symphony of supernovae at the farthest recesses of my mind.

The amygdala and the thalamus finally working together, again.

Longingly yours,

D

[thebulgariancapitalletters-blog]

April 21, 2020

I miss you now, what's come over me? We're hostages of geography The wait is long and heavy too Despite what you're accustomed to I know that life moves on, that's what scares me so Have no intentions of letting go Only us, no one in the world Only us, no one in the world

Queens of the Stone Age, “Villains of Circumstance” (2017)

My dearest S,

I haven’t written anything personal in a long while, which is ironic because I am a writer by profession. Over the past few years, I have written for other people: target audience, shareholders, bosses, clients. I get paid by pulling words from the ether and arrange them into hopefully compelling stories that will convince someone that they came up with an idea to buy something.

But I haven’t written for anyone or myself for the longest time. I think I’ve lost my edge. So bear with me now as I try to relearn how to be intimate and honest with letters.

Your stories about your writing inspired me to take the time to pause, reflect, and relearn how to string together words and ideas for the right cause, the right people. In this case, the right person.

This is why I’m writing you these letters. And god, I am missing you terribly every single day. I hope you do too.

It’s been six weeks and some change since we found ourselves in our current conundrum—and a bit more than that since we last saw each other. The night we were supposed to meet, the whole world was suddenly thrown into chaos. And with it, our opportunity to see each other gone in an instant.

Within a few days, we’ve seen the world like never before: our lives have been drastically limited within the space that we call our home and our only way to connect with other people is through phone calls and messages. Face-to-face interactions with the people who matter the most have become almost criminal. Our lives have been turned upside-down and inside-out. We’re headed for the new normal and the thought of drastic changes excites me.

While we’re about to witness the dawn of a brave new world (or maybe bravo new world, if this whole mess makes the world a kinder place), there are only a few things I tightly latch to—and I have no intention of letting them go.

One of the thoughts that keep me up at night is losing you amidst the conundrum of our time. With our geography holding us hostage, part of me dreads that the distance will make you turn cold. I am fully well aware of the fact that the future for us was left on a cliffhanger and your feelings suspended in a void might cause it to grow weaker by the day.

When the time comes, when we see each other again, I will do what is absolutely necessery and assure you that I am here and will be right by your side. We’ll be co-pilots and god knows where this plane will take us or how much fuel we do have. But that’s discussion for another time.

I hope that when I finally come undone, as you did one night while we were trying to sleep, it’s still not too late.

I miss you dearly. I hope we see each other soon.

Longingly yours,

D