Dear Self/Other

Dear Timur,

You’re writing again – congratulations. I don’t know what it took for you to finally get back to doing that, but I’m not complaining. Nor do I know the contents of this letter to come. We know each other, ourself, as well as is possible. I know your faults. You know my worries. I know that it’s really starting to bother you how much I’ve used the word ‘know’ in just this paragraph. But you know I like the repetition, so indulge me.

We have never truly felt like a whole self. Or fullest self. I’m sure there is something meta-textual about framing that fact within this esoteric, ‘talking to myself’, but rest assured that is entirely unintentional. Contrary to what we too often think, our genius is almost always stumbling onto a half-formed idea and wasting its potential. But back to the subject of self; I honestly don’t know how to define that within the context of us. That feels disconcerting – why do we lack this supposed cohesion in identity that is touted as an immutable characteristic of the human condition?

I know what you are, what I am. We are a collection of feelings, wisps of emotion that blow through our soul and confuse us, excite us, frighten us and encourage us. We fleet and are fleeted through the chaos of consciousness. That last sentence sounded good. It was right, too. We are at the whims of ourselves, beholden to a power that is of us and out of our grasp.

Why are you writing this now? We love to write, yes, but that’s never been a factor motivating enough to be translated into the present continuous. Instead, you love to idealise it. Oh, I’m such a good writer. My erudition is clear, my vocabulary is complex. I feel a sliver of that power when I write. And there it goes. That split-second of control exists to create for us that gossamer thread of addiction – there but not strong enough to be acted on, unfortunately. It’s far easier and almost as comfortable an alternative to just sit there and know that you can write well, content in the fact that doing so brings us joy. But not actually doing so.

There was the word again – know. I think that’s our real addiction. When I write, I am in my element as much as that is possible for me because I’m making sense of those fleeting sentiments in my soul and wisps of notions. It’s the only space in which I feel my own capacity to turn an ‘I think’ into an ‘I know’. What little we know about ourselves and each other comes from this. And whatever is trapped in the filter, that which we are unable to convey in a series of words we like, is lost to us. The truth is made subjective in us, but it is made.