Dear Guan Yin Ma
Date: 1st January 2020, Wednesday
Time: 3:13pm (at time of writing)
Weather: Cloudy, with a chance of meatballs (Hope you get the reference!)
Dear Guan Yin Ma,
How are you? Not sure if you follow our calendar, but today is the first day of a new year, which in the eyes of humans like us, calls for a big celebration. “Celebrate what?”, you may ask. Honestly, after 24 years of the same thing, I still can’t give you a good answer. I don’t think anyone else can either. I guess it’s just one of those things where no one really knows what’s happening but we continue to do it anyway. In any case, I’ll just wish you a Happy New Year first before I get into the depressing stuff.
I’m joking.
Well, you must be wondering why I’m addressing this letter to you, so I shall answer that first. The week before, I had my last session with my school therapist, Joan. As you may already know, I had been seeing Joan since that incident almost a year ago, and had been making much “visible progress”, as Joan has confidently observed in one of our sessions late last year. Although Joan is a wonderful therapist whom I would have loved to continue seeing, my rational mind had to agree with her professional assessment. (Also, the school cannot afford to allocate its limited resources to one student indefinitely.) Anyway, I was doing quite well in school, and had also made some friends in the classes I was taking. I hang out with them sometimes over a meal or at the occasional “drinking sesh” (lingo for “session”) at someone’s house. Yesterday, we even went out celebrating till 5am this morning, which explains why I’m writing you a letter at 3pm now.
Oh yeah, so, Joan suggested that I keep a journal to work out the million things that are constantly running through my mind. She says that I have a tendency to digress when I speak, and writing things down will help to keep my neurons from firing too fast, which in turn helps me to process my thoughts in a clearer way. It made a lot of sense when she said that, and I thought, “Why not?”, so I went to the bookshop right after that session to buy a pen and a notebook. Of course, I could have just used any pen and notebook lying around at home like a normal person, but on that day I didn’t want to be a normal person.
So here I am, with my new pen and notebook, writing to you.
When Joan told me to keep a journal, I was actually quite excited to try it out. The last time I kept a journal was in primary school, when our form teacher would make us write a short entry each week and he would read them and write down comments. The comments are always positive, like, “How nice!”, or “That sounds fun!”, even though they weren’t nice or fun at all, or at least certainly not to an adult. But then again, children find lots of things nice and fun, so I believe my form teacher was just imagining himself as a carefree kid and was reading those journals in a reduced mental state. (And I mean “reduced” in the most positive way.) I still keep those journals from school with me actually. Whenever I feel down, I will take out the journals and read the entries from start to end. Strangely, even though the content never changes, the joy I get from reading them never diminishes. It’s pure magic.
As you can tell, I’ve had a rather wholesome journalling experience before, and I’m hoping this second attempt will live up to the hype I’ve generated in my head. I’ve been excited ever since I bought this pen and notebook, but ran into a small problem when I sat down to write it a few weeks ago — I realised I had no one to address the letter to.
Before you dismiss this as a non-issue, let me remind you of my first journalling experience again. I wrote weekly entries to my form teacher, and he would always read them and faithfully write back. Well, technically, you could argue that comments don’t count as writing back, but I think you get the idea. How was I supposed to address a letter to myself and then write a reply to myself?
I guess I should be asking people who keep diaries. How does it work? Wouldn’t it just be like conversing with yourself in your head? But I am already doing too much of that all the time, which is why Joan wants me to try writing. Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t journalling just sound like another way of doing the same thing I’ve been doing except in written form? How is that better?
I don’t have answers to any of that. I suspect no one does either. Maybe this is also one of those things we do that nobody has any answers to. Frankly, it bothers me a little that there are so many things we don’t know about why we do what we do, but oh well, I can’t complain. I’m okay with not knowing, but it still bothers me.
Anyway, the important thing here is this: Joan is great, and I trust her. I figured, if I can’t write a letter to myself, I can just address the letter to someone else, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out who this “someone else” should be. If I address a letter to someone I know, I should actually give them the letter so if anyone finds it on the off chance, I won’t be reported for being creepy or whatever. If, however, I address this letter to an imaginary person, the same problem of non-reply will surface.
As you may know, I was stuck in a limbo for weeks trying to resolve this issue. Then, I had an epiphany that one night. I was looking out of my window pondering this problem as usual when a flash of lightning forked across the sky. Don’t ask me why, but that made me think of you. Because you fit into neither of the two categories mentioned above, you were the perfect choice for me.
I guess I could have addressed this letter to any other god (or goddess) instead, but you were the first one that came to mind then. Also, I feel like I know you better since I used to go to the temple with my parents. I’m sorry I no longer visit anymore, but you always will have a special space in my heart.
What’s more, since you have powers, I’m sure there’s some way you could send back a reply. I’m really not expecting much, just a little something that will let me know if you’ve read my letter maybe? Should we also agree on a sign so it’s clearer? But I’m not sure if I should decide this on my own. It’s already kind of rude of me to write to you without consulting your willingness to partake in this, so the least I can do now is to give you the freedom to decide how you’re going to reply.
Actually, even if you don’t want to reply, I would be totally cool with it. I understand how busy you must be and how stupid this is for you. It makes zero sense for you to have a human pen pal. Nobody, besides me, the sole recipient, will benefit from this. Even without doing a proper cost-benefit analysis of this exercise, I can confidently conclude that this would be a poor investment of energy (or powers) on your part. I seriously can’t think of any reason why you would spend any energy on this.
Sorry, I digress.
My point is, you writing back to me defies any logic. But then again, the existence of this letter already defies all logic. Nevertheless, I hope I’ve managed to make myself clear on why I’m writing to you.
I will stop here for now. I was only planning on making a short introduction of myself, but it seems I’ve gotten carried away again and written a whole bunch of irrelevant stuff instead. Please be patient with me as I learn how to arrange my thoughts in a clearer manner on paper. Expect improvements in my subsequent letters!
Looking forward to your reply! Or not. Seriously, I won’t mind.
Yours faithfully, Deon
P. S. I just remembered that you follow another calendar and New Year’s for you is not today. I’ll wish you again closer to the date!
P. P. S. I’m not sure how to send this letter to you. Should I burn it? I think I should. But I’ll photocopy it first so I can keep a copy. Just in case you reply, I can refer back to what I wrote so I know what you’re referring to. Like I said, I’m not sure how or what you’re going to reply (if at all), and I don’t want to forget what I said to you. Anyway, this is supposed to be a journal, so I should keep a copy with me. Hope you don’t mind! I’ll give you the original. I’ll go downstairs to burn the letter now.
P. P. P. S. I’m putting the address as Mount Putuo. Google says that’s where you live. Just letting you know.
*Sorry about the messy additions. It’s not an email, so I can’t edit it. Okay, bye for real this time!
This is a work of fiction. References to any religious figures or institutions were not meant to poke fun at religion. I wholeheartedly welcome any feedback on my writing.
See you again in my next piece!
