To all my peers who dislike the influx of open letters flooding social media and our internet -- this letter is for you.
I once read somewhere that if you were thinking about writing an open letter, you should stop right at the thought. Open letters are cliché, overdone and ooze the same underlying statement -- “I’m a college girl trying to be philosophical, empathetic and relatable.”
While the previous statement is undeniable, open letters are exactly what they promise to be -- open. There is solace in the words found from an unknown friend. Open letters provide an author the ability to vent about whatever struggle they find themselves fighting through and serve an extra purpose in turn. Authors can let their hearts bleed out into the keys of their laptops and someone maybe a hundred miles away or somebody sitting in the cubby beside you in the library will find peace in those same words.
Open letters can get a bad rep for being repetitive, but there is no harm in multiple people expressing the different ways they’ve learned to cope with the battles they face while trudging through the battlefields college possesses on a daily basis. Open letters are like open wounds. There is someone out there, probably a few, that are willing to expose their wounds and show you how to sew the stitches with the hope that others will follow their tutorial and learn to heal themselves.
Sometimes as authors, in-tune with the rhythm of our heart and the melody of our emotions, we boast the idea of being insightful. We wish to convey the wisdom we’ve gained, or think we’ve gained, with the world and hope that the earth’s pupils may gain some stability and good judgment.
There will be a repeat of the same topic. There will be letters dripping with emotion. There will be simple letters, short letters, long letters and intricate letters. There’s a vast array of open letters for you to surf the web to articulate whatever feelings brewing in your heart. There’s an open letter out there that formulates words you cannot assign to the knots tangling and intertwining in the pit of your being.
Open letters are cliché, overdone, but open letters hold a crucial power within them -- the power to heal, the power of understanding, and the idea you aren’t alone in your feelings.
So the next time you’re going to roll your eyes at the next “open letter to XYZ” that’s shared by three different girls on your Facebook news feed, remember there is a mutual kind of pain in those letters. Wherever there is mutual pain, there is an opportunity for comfort and peace as well.
