Dear Friend,

As I listen to the growing storm outside, the thunder reverberating through my room and my being, it brings back the feeling of being small. Of being insignificant or easily forgotten, something that can easily be overlooked. One might say, "Oh silly, but you have people that care about you!" While this is true, and I acknowledge that it's true, I don't feel it, at least not yet.

Every day lately has felt as though I've been locked inside an aquarium, where all the people I keep close are outside the glass just passing me by while I drown in the waters of my own thoughts and my life. I suppose it isn't so much that I'm feeling lonely, because I don't think that I am, but I do feel as though my disconnected emotions put me at a distance that I can never cross. That glass wall that's so painfully translucent and deceiving - I know that I've put it there. I put it there and I can't break it. No matter how close I am to someone, they can never follow me if I pull away to hide within the deepest parts of my ocean.

Part of this is me admitting that I struggle with everything that I am when letting people be close to me and remain close to me. But the thing is, I don't actually know how to swim, so how could I ever navigate the waters of my own making? I'm stubborn and arrogant and I never really want people to know that the feeling of drowning doesn't go away.

I guess, in the reality of things, I just want to apologize to myself. To apologize to the fourteen year old me who was faced with a wave of emotions that forced them to shutdown. Forced them to lock everything inside and stay disconnected from the normal things that people are meant to experience. Sure, it was thanks to them that I'm no longer surprised by the negativity that exists in life and the hardships that are bound to come, but I also wish that I could have experienced them with more feeling. Not this hollow cold that makes me ache.

Though despite all this, I know that now, with my emotional switch having been turned off for so many years, all I can do is take it one day at a time and re-experience the emotions that I thought were truly lost to me. All of them, not simply the ones that I want to feel again. With that in mind, I do hope that you also are able to take it one day at a time, with whatever hardship you may be facing currently. Because every step forward, no matter how small, is still a step forward. It's enough, truly.

Sincerely,

Someone who's trying