{"product_id":"letter-039","title":"Letter 039 — Vision or Delusion","description":"\u003cp\u003eDear me,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMy social battery drained by Thursday, so I need you to know: at 3 p.m., I sent a message to F., deciding that I am mature enough to give the responsibility of motivating me to someone else, but myself, this time.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDear me, the homecoming isn't going as planned.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOne of my favourite things to do is have a drink with my brother and catch up on the past few months. I love the way he looks up to my advice and how much of friends and gossip partners we are.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAlthough that look in his face was not there after three Scotches and two hours of talking only about him.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHe looked at me and said that he feels like a complete failure because he hasn't achieved anything material after three years of running his business, and he is almost 30.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLet me just say how absolutely stupid I think that is.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnd add that when I asked him,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“So you think because I am 40, I haven't bought an apartment, I am not married, and I don't have kids, I am a failure?”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHe said nothing.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHe just continued with another topic.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThat was the highest point of heartbreak I could bear this week, and in the past, I don't know, few years.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI pretended that nothing happened and continued listening to him bragging about how people love him and how cool he is.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eStone-cold. A little bit tipsy. And heartbroken.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI said nothing.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI finished my whiskey and went upstairs.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI don't remember what happened the next day, but I felt like whatever it was, I couldn't bear it anymore.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eF. said she was free, and I gave her a quick call, which ended up being more of a disaster than my brother's silence.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI don't even want to go there — to the blockage she claims I have, who I am without work, and what my purpose is.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI thought I had made that clear.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut I suppose when you're living inside a dream that only you can see in its entirety, to everyone else it looks like you aren't moving at all.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhen I was a kid — well, 20, but I was really a kid — I saved for three summers to buy Alexander McQueen shoes because they made me feel something.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI didn't know why I adored his work so much.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSometimes the feeling comes way before the realisation.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eActually, almost always.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eYears later, I read a quote from him:\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“I want people to fear the women who wear my clothes.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThat made me weak at the knees and grow a pair of wings on my back at the same time.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat power.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat a message.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnd I don't think the fear was ever really about the clothes.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt's about what a woman chooses to look like, to feel like, to become.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnd maybe that's why his work stayed somewhere inside me.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBecause I don't think I became myself because my heart was broken.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI became myself despite it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe broken heart was just one of the things life handed me.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI just decided not to treat it like a weakness.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI decided to use it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTo look at the thing everyone tells us is supposed to destroy us and ask what else it could become.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA weapon, maybe.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA piece of art.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA fucking fitting room.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBecause perhaps the broken heart isn't the end of something.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMaybe it's the place where you try on the next version of yourself.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnd that's what my brand stays firm on.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI want women to see it differently.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNot because heartbreak is beautiful.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt fucking isn't.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNot because pain is something we should be grateful for.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt isn't.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut because not everything life tells us is bad has to stay bad forever.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSometimes you get to decide what it becomes.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe broken heart is just one of the most expensive invoices life sends you after happiness.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePay full price.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLeave a tip.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt was worth it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGosh, didn't I just motivate myself, even while writing that?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI think I was really born with a broken heart, and somehow I need to find a reason to break it again once in a while, just to feel alive.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHealthy?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNo.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMaybe not.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut where's the rulebook for what the “right” feeling is, and who wrote it?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt the end of the day — at the end of a life — doesn't it matter that we were happy, even in our sadness, even in our loneliness?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eYes, my clothes are in boxes at my mum's place because I have decided that I am not finished yet, and bigger things are waiting for me than paying rent and working 9 to 5.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSo am I a loser because I am pursuing something nobody else can see yet?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnd is that why I would rather be lonely?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNot loneliness because nobody is there —\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eloneliness because nobody can see what you can already see.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOr have I become so psychologically occupied by the thing I'm pursuing that ordinary conversation has become almost impossible to satisfy me?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Love Letters To Myself","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":58293099299147,"sku":null,"price":1.49,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/loveletterstomyself.co\/products\/letter-039","provider":"Love Letters To Myself","version":"1.0","type":"link"}