Dear Reader, I offer to you today a challenge: to find a singular post in which I do not proudly proclaim myself to be a hopeless romantic.
I am not sure such a post exists, as not only do I turn weak at the thought of true love and walks in the rain and shared smiles, but my heart sits upon my sleeve as if it were a badge of honor. As it were, I recently expressed to my friends a desire to write a love letter – a true, genuine note detailing my affections, the sort about which Eliza Hamilton would sing while setting aflame. However, upon recollection that my current state of affairs is hardly more improved than that of a debutante with only one ostrich feather in her hair, I came to the conclusion that it is more than acceptable to direct my affections to any entity of my choosing, later to be revealed to my (admittedly few) devoted subscribers, all of whom I am sure would be most interested in reading a love letter not addressed to them.
All this to say, I have written a love letter, though I admit as I set my metaphorical pen to its metaphorical paper the resulting composition was more of an homage than it was a note of adoration. However, I yet invite you to celebrate with me, should you like to do so, the preeminent power known to us as “Release.”
One last thing before I begin: I must further offer my most sincere apologies, Reader, for the timeline of this post is not entirely synchronous. I began writing these words on April 12, one year after the last day on which I attended high school in person. However, as I elected to take a step back from writing as I focused on finishing the second term of my freshman year of college, this post was never completed. Please know that while these words are being published a few months later than I had anticipated, the sentiments expressed below are still very much unchanged.
Release –
I know not what to make of that elusive power who answers to the name of Fate – I know not whether She is real, and if She is, whether She is vindictive, calculating, mysterious, kind, fair, or erratic. I do not know if I truly have agency over my life, or if each of my choices falls into the lap of an omnipotent marionettist, who pulls transparent strings while allowing me to believe I act of my own volition. I do not know, and yet I fear to be enlightened would put me in a worse condition.
What I do know is this: that upon writing these words, it has been one year since my final day of high school.
I was a 2020 Senior. The sentence fills me with a sense of great martyrdom, and though the loss of a traditional end to my youthful education was undoubtedly upsetting, I admit I had few objections to being marked as the epitome of gallantry; I seem to have an inclination to affix my heart to those of heroes, and on those few occasions in which our conditions mirror one another, I am much placated. The class of 2020 were not, of course, the true heroes of the pandemic, but rather were minor casualties in a much larger crusade, for it can not be denied that the Spring of 2020 was an international horror.
I saw a video while in lockdown of a group of high school seniors on their last day of school in the 1980s. There was the moment, captured on video, toward which they had been working, dreaming, anticipating for twelve years. It was the dissolution of a decade’s worth of social hierarchies in one day of unified celebration; it was the dazed reflection on all that had surpassed in the last ten-odd years; it was the irrepressible excitement for the approaching fall in the heat of the early June sun. It was something I did not experience.
I remember precious little about my final day of high school. Video evidence sent to me this afternoon indicates I wore the same shirt that day that I wear now as I write this – an unplanned but eerie coincidence, which again begs me to question whether I am truly the executor of my own free will.
And yet here I stand – or sit, rather, though the distinction hardly matters – one year after the fact, very much a different person today than I was when I walked out of my seventh-period class for the last time three hundred and sixty-five days ago. No mind could fathom all the many ways by which I have been shaped and reshaped, the least capable among these being my own, and I will not insult you by wasting your time in an attempt to do so. Rather, I will take this time to revere you, Release.
There was a time when I despised you. There was a time when I preferred to wrestle that which blocked my path until I prevailed, victorious, in total control of my life and surroundings. To this day, I regard you with a sense of wary – for you represent the endless freedoms and pleasures of this world, all of which are born from places of hardship and toil.
I fight you because I need you, Release. I fight you because I am afraid to live a life in which you are a primary force and yet I suffocate without you. I fight you because I prefer the illusion of playing manageress of my own affairs, because it is easier to anchor my vessel in known waters than it is to sail forward into the uncharted sea. To search for you is exhausting, to catch you is even more loathsome a feat. There is safety in holding close what is familiar – there is nothing safe in letting go.
But I try not to live my life in search of safety. Certainly, there have been periods of time in which I sought solace with greater urgency than I did hazard, but even in the midst of great discomfort there exists the exhilaration and triumph that comes with perseverance and growth. For as I have well learned time and time again: it is only by venturing forward into the unknown that we may feel our hearts quicken with awakened passion, think with greater depth and creativity, love with fervor. So often do I proclaim my longing to embark on a great adventure – to hear the call, and run toward the setting sun armed with nothing but my closest companions, a decade-old Jansport backpack, and a burning need to make right that which is wrong. In these moments, I compose grand ideas for the terrible forces my friends and I will face, the epic battles we will have, the story we will tell for years after it has ended, and in the process, I overlook your outstretched hand, Release, offering me the chance at adventure every day. You know better than I that there is great valor in living what appears to be a routine lifestyle while cloaked in the values necessary to be worn should one desire a brush encounter with your presence. There is great adventure in a day begun with vulnerability, honesty, and simplicity- a day met breathing in the moment and letting yesterday float away on a sigh.
It is you, Release, who keeps me in a place of growth, of love, of learning, of peace. You, who are fiercely connected to that mystery that is Fate, and yet are Her total opposite. You, who are not the indestructible design over which I have no autonomy, but the choice I make every day to be guided by Fate Herself. You, who are the unexpected, the pain, the joy – you are not contained by any one word. You are life itself, you are the growth and regression, the closure and the ever-gaping wound.
I had no final celebration of my high school experience. There are people from my twelve years of schooling who I will likely never see again, simply because while we were daily acquaintances within the walls of those cinder-block buildings, our relationships did not extend beyond the rusting hinges of the front doors. There is a sense of deep, irreparable sadness in the sudden expiration of something shared – especially when that something is as fragile and unique as is the experience of youth. I grew up in a community of individuals who became adults alone.
I now grow older with people who I will never know in the same way I knew my graduating class, and I will not know my class in the same way as their new peers will come to know them. I have walked with new companions through a year of college that met my expectations in none of the ways I was anticipating. It has been an adventure that has left me confused, exhausted, and exhilarated. Yet above all else, the great endeavor that was the last two years has led me back to you – a need for Release. All roads may lead to Rome, but you are the Empire to which we are all subject.
Release, this is my letter to you. It is not a conventional note of adoration, but a profession of necessity. You mold, you prevail, you breathe life. You are elusive to those who have not earned the right of your blessing and terribly wonderful to those who are fortunate enough to have done so. You are the next step in my journey, and every step thereafter. Though I fear you, I beg of you not to stay too far from me. Such is love.
Love,
Lettie Anne
Photo from Pinterest.