July 1, 2014
Dear stranger,
Thank you. Thank you for responding and thank you for doing it so fast. I really hope we can be support of some sort to each other through these letters. I feel like someone is finally going to hear me after all this time. It has been a while… But I will get to that later in the letter.
Of course, our little correspondence won’t work if there are no rules to protect ourselves and open up to each other. Well.. at least not for me. Because I don’t want that to happen, I thought of some rules. Please do feel free to add new rules any time and I am open for debate if you’d like to alter one of the rules. (You’ll need very persistent arguments though, because I thought long and hard about these rules)
My rules:
1) For the mental health of the both of us. We can only write one letter to each other each week. We mustn’t allow this correspondence take over our lives. (which is something that could happen easily in my case). Though less might be mean to the other one. So let us be consistent. Of course, when there is an emergency I’ll allow extra contact.
2) No real names! You agreed to an anonymous correspondence. We are anonymous, but our family, friends, enemies and everyone else mentioned in our little stories need to be anonymous as well.
I am going to alter their names. It’s, of course, up to you how you’ll refer to them.
3) We need to give each other as much details as possible. I sort of use you as my Harry Potter diary (though I do hope you won’t try to kill me). I write to you, you respond. I tell you everything I need to get off my shoulders. And I consider it the only way to be able to help one or another. It might me horrible to read, but necessary. Be as complete as you can and remember, it is anonymous anyway. So why bother leaving things out?
4) No photographs, phone numbers, email addresses etc. These letters are our only contact.
5) This is more of a request. Please let this be our secret. Nobody needs to know what we are writing to each other. Don’t tell nor show anyone. This is our correspondence and what I write to you, I write to you in confidence.
Feel free to add extra rules if you want to.
So, let me tell you why exactly I need you. Like I said in my previous letter, “I need to be able to talk to someone, because I don’t really have that someone anymore.” You see, I did have someone once. She was very precious to me. I can hear you wonder: ‘What happened to her? Why can’t you talk to her anymore?’ Well dear stranger, she (lets refer to her as Hazel) was taken from me.
No! not by a certain person. Because if that were the case, Hazel would’ve never been my confidant. No, my dear friend was taken by the horrible decease called ‘cancer’. This horrible thing that I couldn’t protect Hazel from. I had to watch my best friend slowly slip into oblivion. Oh, what a cruel world we live in.
So, the past year has been very hard on me.
In my earlier days I was the victim of bullying. Hazel noticed and stood up for me. She helped me get through these horrible days. She helped me build up my scattered confidence. Soon we became best friends and have been ever since. We were close, very close. One day… Well, Hazel wasn’t feeling all that great, terrible actually. Together we went to the doctor. She had to do some tests and well… A few weeks after the tests she got a call. It was the doctor asking if she could come to the hospital asap. Well, one plus one is two… Cancer.
You must know, Hazel is one of the strongest people I know. There is not a soul in this world who could have possibly been stronger. But after ‘the news’ I saw the fragile scared little girl whom she protected me from. She still tried to protect me from her after, but I knew the both of them needed me in these harsh times. We became inseparable. She knew my fears (of course), but now I saw hers. We shared them. We shared our fears, our experiences, our tears, our laughter, our angry tantrums when we couldn’t understand how this world could possibly be so cruel and much more. (I could write a letter about that by itself). I held her hand through the entire process (not literally). When she had her chemo, the days after, when she felt sick, when her hair fell out (which was an emotional moment)…
It were a rough couple of months.
Tomorrow exactly three months ago her body and mind stopped fighting. The evil cancer cells won and they took my best friend away from me. Just like that. I cried for 10 days straight. The depression she soothed got worse again up until the moment my mother literally had to pull me away from the edge.. of a rooftop.
After crying together for two hours my mom begged me to talk to someone. She didn’t care who, as long as I had someone I trusted to talk to. Just so I wouldn’t try to… well, you know. That was when I decided to write a letter and thrust it in the wind, hoping someone would read it. Not exactly what my mom meant when she wanted me to talk to someone. But after an emotional talk we agreed to give it a few months. (No pressure c: soz).
Geez, I just reread everything… This is quite a story. (confession: I cried at the point when I started to talk about Hazel) If you want to help me it is important you know all of this, but I do understand if you think this is too much to handle.
Sorry, I think I should have given you a heads up in the previous letter. (I really hope I didn’t scare you away, because I really want to know how I can help you)
Yours truly
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