to anyone
L e t t e r s
to anyone
to anyone
dear anyone,
i’ve been sleeping a lot lately.
i get in trouble for it, too. i just don’t know how to make myself stay up long enough to see what’s going on around me.
i’m just so tired and i don’t know what to do.
love,
sophie
dear anyone,
i watched a film in class today called “american history x.”
it was absolutely phenomenal. the acting, the plot, and everything else. i’ll be honest, it did scar me, a little bit. of course everyone knows about racism - we see it everyday: in the media, in schools, at the mall, and everywhere else. it’s not something a person can just hide away from. it’s one of those things that sticks to you like dirt you can’t wash off.
i’ve never fully understood racism. it’s just something that has been there since day one, with my parents saying, “treat everyone the same as you would want to be treated, no matter where they come from.” i’ve lived with those words my whole life.
in school, my teachers would talk to us about martin luther king jr. and rosa parks, two black americans who stood up for what they believed to be right. my teachers would all say that race doesn’t define who we are, we define who we are. if that makes any sense. we make our own, personal mistakes, and pay for them ourselves. we shouldn’t bring down a whole group of people just because they share one physical characteristic.
racism doesn’t make sense. at least, not to me. how can you look at a person and decide, “i’m not going to like them because they are this specific colour.”
why? why?
why?
colour is just one fragment of our bodies. rip all this skin off and we’re all flesh and blood underneath. you couldn’t tell a black person from a white person and an asian from a brown person if we didn’t have this thing called skin. and that’s all it really is, isn’t it? skin.
people disgust me sometimes, they really do. i won’t lie, i have been ill-treated in the past due to my race, more than once. but i value human respect and kindness over all else and i won’t let something that was there one minute and gone the next drive my life. i won’t let them win because if i fight back, if i begin to hate from where they come, will i be able to look at myself in the mirror and say, “i’m proud of who i am?”
because i know i won’t and the last thing i want to do is disappoint myself for something as little as skin pigmentation.
it’s not the race that’s the problem, it’s the humans.
love,
sophie
dear anyone,
there’s something about me that i can’t help but notice hurts everyone and i know it does, but i can’t seem to turn away from it. i try to be the best person i can, yet, it becomes so difficult at times and i wonder what is to gain in putting forth so much effort.
while my mother is away, i have the weight of an entire family on my shoulders. siblings are never easy to take care of and my dad, he’s entirely something else. nothing i do ever pleases him. it never has. i know he only means well when he says, “sophie, you don’t work hard enough in school. you need to get your grades up!” but it’s hard to listen to him at times. he goes to work and he talks about it later, as if he’s the only man in existence who’s ever had to work for a living. it seems rather harsh to say this, but he’s quite selfish in this sense. he only ever sees what he’s done and fails to notice the rest of us still exist.
my sister says he and i share that quality and that frightens me more than anything. being the eldest in such a large family is a burden. i’m thankful for all that i have, but in my own, i know that i deserve it. i’ve been through so much to get to where i am now, i’ve truly earned my place. i know so much more than people my age do. i’m wise in a way i’ve never known anyone else to be. i see things, i understand them, and even when i act like i don’t, i do. i’ve felt defeat, i’ve felt sadness, i’ve felt hurt. it is not to say others have not, but the weight that i carry, at the age in which i should be living to my fullest, it’s unbearable.
i sound selfish now and that was not my intention. i just want to say this because it feels like no one really cares what i do anymore. nothing i do seems to make anyone happy. i don’t mean to make those around me upset. i don’t mean to harm them in anyway or destroy their image of me. but when will the time come when i can openly be me and not have to care what others think?
love,
sophie
dear anyone,
do you ever cry and wonder why you do?
you have nothing to be sad about, yet you are crying and sometimes for hours upon hours.
i cried today. and yesterday night and i don’t know why i am.
none of this makes any sense at all.
love,
sophie
dear anyone,
it’s the end of the first day of a new year. not much happened, besides maybe my sister, brother and i feeling at loss with british television. there isn’t really anything better than that.
i was a mess of tears and laughter.
for the first time in a long time, i can’t wait until tomorrow.
love,
sophie
dear anyone,
it’s new year’s eve.
that means the end of the past year and the beginning of a new one.
there are so many things which have altered my life greatly this year and i honestly still don’t know if these things are all good. they probably aren’t.
this year, i am going to graduate from high school. i have never been so excited for anything in my life. i just need to get away. away from this school, from the same people, away from this town and its every day normality. i need change. i need it so desperately, i sometimes wonder how i haven’t done anything yet to capture it.
i hope to be a different person this year. i hope to make amends with those who i have hurt intentionally and unintentionally. i hope to make my parents proud of their daughter. i hope to make my siblings grateful to have someone like me as their older sister. i hope to make friends, friends who will love me the same as i will love them. i hope to achieve the grades for university and move on to a happier future.
i hope for all these things and i can only hope more, that they will happen.
love,
sophie
dear anyone,
i hate getting up in the mornings now. i feel tired and irritated and frustrated and angry. i don’t like to push the covers off me and stand up and go to the bathroom and then meet my family downstairs for breakfast. i don’t like doing any of it.
every day is becoming more and more of a struggle and even though i hate feeling this way, i sort of like it, too. it’s the only thing that’s consistent in my life anymore.
love,
sophie
dear anyone,
i wonder if the world really will end tomorrow.
it probably won’t and i don’t know how i feel about that.
love,
sophie
dear anyone,
those kids didn’t deserve to die.
no one deserves to die that way.
but they did and now their families will have one less smiling child at christmas dinner.
love,
sophie
dear anyone,
i think i messed up my presentation for my society class today. i was so scared to go up and present and i think i chose the wrong song and just…everything’s so messed up.
i really do hope i did well. i can’t bear the thought of a bad mark. my parents would be disappointed in me and i’d be even more upset with myself. i’m trying so hard to do well this year, so i can manage the grades for univesity, yet nothing i do is cutting it. i barely make it past the mark i need for the university of choice. i’m so angry with myself.
this was supposed to be my year of changes. good changes, but they didn’t happen.
love,
sophie
