A Letter to My Past Lover: About Mission of Life

This article is a part of the continuing series of my reflection on self, people, love, intimacy, solitude, and the most complex one, life itself. I write this series in the form of a letter to a past lover or simply self-talking. He was at one time one of my closest friends, and I seemed rather self-expressive around him, romantically spirited and simultaneously inferior, tactless, even cliche. This dramatic, cringing self-contradiction is a side of me that also everyone in this world possesses but does not commonly show up. So I hope you all relax your muscles and facial expressions while reading and enjoy these sweet-bitter pieces.:)

This article was originally published on Medium.com on June 11, 2024.

Time has flown since the last time I intended to have a deep conversation with you. While we greeted each other from time to time on social media, I myself spent a raucous yet silenced time contemplating my life.

As I noted in my journal, I have been thinking very seriously about switching careers as a writer. I was momentarily sunk into despair when our last understanding of our relationship again diverged. All is very reasonable since my decision to leave my job seemed to coincide with my losing you once again. In short, my identity in this country, the United States, is precarious, my functional role in society is shaking, and my relationships and network are starting to loosen again.

All these make my life full of blueness. Yet very interestingly, aside from venting my overwhelm and despair through tears, I picked up a pen. Without enough practical knowledge or means to solve any of my life problems, I seem to feel that the only thing I can do is write — it serves as both an emotional outlet and a personal documentation. By this point, I suspect you can tell: I’m such a self-obsessed person, and writing somehow allows me to righteously entitle my unspeakable thoughts, emotions, and impulses, my affectated life as the work of arts.

I gained a new vitality from writing. And I felt exhilarated by this new discovery; I never expected writing to play such a role for me. I was determined to give it a try since I’d lost my job anyway, and the job market was so pathetic.

So you might find I’ve been raucous and kept silent quirkily, recently — my social media started to involve more literary language, longer paragraphs, and boastful speech about literature, life, or feminism. Yet I’ve been negligent in explaining to people my intentions in doing all this and a sudden change in my life decisions. I wish people could notice that something has been changing; at the same time, I wish they would never take it seriously at all. I’m so young and unsure. They would never know how dangerous “becoming a writer” could be to me!

I also started going to the bookstore with plans to add more resources for myself — I need to learn more about the craft of writing. And as I passed the bookshelves, I was stunned. I looked at the densely packed rows of books, most of them with just their spines facing me, and only a few, the very lucky and remarkable ones, could take up this very lavish space and were able to show off their covers, titles, and colorful illustrations — I could only scan over the name of each book sparingly. I feel hopeless about the dream of being a writer since this is how much space our millions of days and nights are going to take up in reality.

But I still want to write, and sometimes I even think being a third-rate, lousy writer would still be an honor for me. With writing, I feel like I’m utilizing precisely the greatest value behind my ordinariness. Because most people, or, I can even confidently assume that, EVERY SINGLE person, can find a little bit of reassurance in my experience, whether it’s about youthful confusion, chaotic life choices, or perplexing human relationships …… And I think that’s exactly the value of literature, that by bearing witness to other people’s experiences, it vastly extends human beings’ capacity to endure pain and uncertainty.

— I did my best to picture my new mission as grand and glorious. Because I have nothing, I have to believe in something to move on.

Anyway, don’t try to analyze for me after reading these soliloquies. Because even I don’t know where my path is heading.

Best wishes,