Dear Damaged Soul,

Maybe you have forgotten the precise moment the light inside of you flickered out, but you remember becoming a living corpse, a shell of what you used to be. You became aware of your strange detachment from the world, from people. You have gotten angry by the fact that whatever terrible thing happened to you, now prevents you from being who you were, and who you could have become. You endure an endless war between feeling absolutely nothing and feeling everything too deeply. The fear of potentially being hurt again keeps you awake long into the night. You have probably pondered over whether it is worse to have never experienced the amount of happiness you knew, or having experienced it and being forced to accept that there is no possibility of getting it back. Tragedy doused your life with lighter fluid, lit a match, and walked away while your world burned, not sticking around to help you try and glue the ashes together.

You need to know that you are not alone. There are other damaged souls who understand the irrational anger you feel towards people. You want to open up and let people into your head and heart, but you decide it is unfair towards them to reveal those dark, undesirable places. When you have unveiled your deepest, most vulnerable self to someone in the past, you became bitter about the fact that they will never understand what you went through, because it did not happen to them. Most likely, this bitterness triggered a wave of guilt that threatened to drown you, because in a way, you indirectly wished that kind of pain on someone else, just so you could feel less lonely.

I understand that it is all very exhausting. I am familiar with the threat you feel when the noise of your overpowering emotions, bouncing around in your head, becomes too loud. I know that you want to turn it all off and become numb. Sure, you will avoid feeling the bad emotions, but you will deprive yourself of feeling the good ones as well. I know that communicating how you really feel seems impossible. Either you cannot talk about your feelings because you simply do not understand them, or you are afraid that words will diminish what seemed important and powerful in your head. If you are like me, you have probably even cried when you attempted to share something important to you, because you just could not get the words out. You choked up and got frustrated because talking about how you feel should not be that hard. What you yearn for most of all is someone who understands you.

Guess what? There are people out there who understand. I understand. YOU ARE NOT ALONE. You do not have to hide behind the painstakingly constructed walls guarding your heart. There is no need to bottle up every terrible thing you feel, because doing so is extremely unhealthy. There are people who care about you and love you. Although they might not have lived through your hardship, they genuinely want to know how you are feeling and that you are okay, no matter how much you try and convince yourself otherwise.

I am writing this letter for you, but I am also writing it for myself. I am writing for us to remember that we are not alone in this universe and that our journey ahead is not easy. The terrible things that have happened to us in the past do not define us, nor can they negatively influence our future unless we permit it. We have learned so much from our experiences and now possess the gift of helping others when their world is burning. We will have to fight the aftermath of our tragedies every day, but we cannot give up, because our happiness is worth it.

Sincerely,

A Fellow Healing Soul