I will use this opportunity to write an afterword I’ve been long considering for the 30-day letter challenge. Here it goes.

·Afterword·

In conclusion,

I’d like to say that I’m glad I took on this challenge. Honestly, I used to think such things retarded, especially on people’s blogs. I’ve seen them around, but never on my dashboard because I don’t follow many personal blogs (I’m not interested). However, the moment I started, with the very first letter, I put effort into it and vowed to never skip a letter because there was no addressee or no such case in my life. Often, such letters were longer than those targeted at particular individuals.
Now, I like to think that I found out more about myself and my values while writing these letters, especially the general ones — I know it may not seem this way when one looks at my latest letter, and I admit that that one had a lot of bias and anger in it, perhaps showing some ignorance I possess (and there are lots more where that came from). I took my time to think of the recipients and, when I found none, I still wrote what I thought about that theme. These letters motivated me to write about grievances and contemplations I’ve had for a long time, but never considered writing down. Now I feel I have something to come back to, a certain ground to spring from that may be used at any point in my life to re-assess my principles. Soon after I started these letters, I also began to write down one-sentence lessons I have learned in my life, tagged as “my way” unambiguously. They may be wrong in other people’s eyes, in my mother’s eyes, or seem tactless to you, but to me they make sense. They go accordingly with my character, if there is a strong one showing. I like to think so.
Some people will never see these letters. Others have already read the ones addressed to them, whether on their own or through my guidance and persuasion. There are some in the first category whom I’d really, really like to see their letters, but who might never come back into my life.
As with all my writings, I can never feel the same emotions I had while writing a piece. Which, I have to admit, kinda sucks. I feel that I put so much of my soul into each letter at the time of its writing, yet when I re-read a couple that I saw as especially emotional, I felt nothing. That is sad; those people mean(t) something in my life.
There was an interesting moment in my childhood when I was inspired to, by the time I’m a big girl of fifteen years, add blond highlights to my hair and have a shaggy short haircut. Only recently have I realized that that idea was so 90’s: I was really a child of my decade! As written in a letter to my future self, I have high hopes for the person I will be physically and emotionally. I hope to be fit, successful(?), beautiful, and so on. I imagine myself in those tight dress suits with skirts and jackets, with either long flowing hair or yet another alternative hairstyle — whatever tickles my fancy — but I wonder how that image will evolve with ITS time, in the mid-XXI century. I’m kind of impatient to find out, but I know I better calm down and take my time to work toward that desired image and mold the rest as the future becomes today. Tomorrow, tomorrow comes today…
At this point, I will resort to the phrase I’ve used for years now when my writing is cut short by losing my track of thought: “and here the thought ends.”
Let’s see what my reflection in the mirror will make of herself in 10, 20, 30 years. I’m mighty curious.

Thank you for being my faithful audience.

Katya

Dear stereotypical African American,

Jesus Christ, I even read The New Jim Crow to understand your plight better!! But that doesn’t answer the many fucking grievances I have about your goddamn attitude. I can see where, on the system level, mass incarceration could target minorities more than Caucasians, but it doesn’t change the way you act on the individual level. If, two decades ago, gangsta rap, saggy pants, and mistreating your bitches was part of embracing the stigma of “the criminal” that white people have set on you, today it has inevitably become part of your culture.
I know black people who are considerate, treat people around them fairly, don’t see every confrontation as a threat and don’t feel the need to scream and laugh so loudly as if their life depended on it. Why can’t more of you be that way? Nooo, you feel compelled to make others uncomfortable by being obnoxious, loud, breaking into a dance in public places, being offended by the word “nigger” (I have black friends who don’t see it as offensive because they understand there is no offense intended behind its use, goddamn it), ignoring other people’s requests or even their existence, and so on. I don’t understand what makes you think that all white people are the same and they all wish to do you harm. Trust me, I’m saying this here right now only because of the way YOU act preemptively. When I moved in with my roommate, I told her I barely knew anything about black culture — I wasn’t going to lie or go off based on the racist shit I’ve seen on the internet, I gave her a chance — and so she showed me all there was to black people: fast food, overheated room, shameless display of affection (especially loud making out in front of my face), not acknowledging white people’s existence until you need something from them, TV that is constantly on, but that anyone hardly pays attention to, ignorance of music other than R’n’B and rap, patting yourself on the head because your wig is itchy, and just LOUDNESS, LOUDNESS, LOUDNESS!
It feels as if with you I have to earn my respect, and if I don’t meet your criteria of a respectable person right away, I’ll be treated like utter shit. However, you forget that there is just that human respect for another person’s privacy, personal space, and consideration for their feelings. Some things should just be commonsense, but you don’t feel you have any obligation as a human to other humans. That frustrates me. But I know that you are physically superior to me and so I’m intimidated, I don’t want to confront you because you’d rather just yell and make me feel like a villain — and yourself a victim — and hey, who knows, suckerpunch me in the end if all else fails. Sometimes the things you say make me feel like a minority, like the “oppressed” because you make that racist assumption that I make an assumption about you. Well then, prove me otherwise. Please do: behave like a respectable citizen and not like a beast, be moderate at least SOMETIMES, your whole life is not one flashy show and all these bitches and niggas (and whiteys) around you are not out to get you.
I give people chances, but when I see them acting retarded off the bat — with their arguments (typical structure thereof being, “When it’s someone else, you do nothing, but when it’s me, you tell me to do so-and-so”), their outward shit-talking for no apparent reason, their fighting about trifles and shit nobody cares about, ..I just give up. I gave black people a chance when I came to Chicago and my entire school was multiracial at once. I had one black girl in one of my classes in high school, and I remember her being excessively loud and laughing at everything.. Somehow, I was naïve enough to believe she was an exception. Damn, was I wrong. I cannot rest without a group of black people being loud near me, dancing, singing, and bitching. At least Alex (that girl) was nice. Here in Chicago, I could probably count the number of well-mannered black people on one or two hands. That is sad.
If you want change and fair treatment, then act like you are part of this society. I understand that you may not have started at the same level as white people have in school, neighborhood, and so on, but once you enter the integrated society you can’t just ignore the white population and stay in your cliques. That definitely won’t do it. If Michelle Alexander in her book calls for a new social consensus, you will have to be the ones to influence it if you want your change. There are conscious African Americans out there who see what is wrong with their mainstream culture and who refuse to be part of it. I just wish they could make their relatives and friends wake up.
And if this sounds racist in your mind, well fuck me. I could not be more impartial because I lived with a stereotypical African American girl this academic year, and it would have killed all hope for nice black people in my mind if it wasn’t for my good friend Darineka, who is not a stereotypical black girl; another thing is that my roommate is blessed with good brains and can sometimes be compliant without flipping shit. Still, we never made it past “Hello” and she never speaks to me unless she needs something, so I live in my room as if there is a wall separating us, and I felt like shit being unacknowledged in my own room most of the time. I, for one, am always considerate when bringing friends to my room (which I rarely do because there is an unpleasant atmosphere), I never make noises when she is sleeping in the morning, I never make noises when she is sleeping in the afternoon, I don’t bang doors (as she does every time), and so on. I feel it would be alright if I finally wrote all these hard feelings out somewhere. I feel I can be excused, as I excused her ass in my mind for 3/4 of this year.

And that, they say, is that.

Dear…

I can’t come up with a single person who had the most influence on my life. There were several: J, Svein Adalwolf Essen, Seth, Ricky, Dustin, and so on… Each in his own way changed something about me and perhaps taught me something. But I cannot say that there was one central figure who taught me the most. My parents taught me. My teachers taught me. My friends and enemies taught me. Literary works molded me as well as people, but sometimes only temporarily. In the end, I always go back to being my old self.
I suppose it’s true that people really never change. They may suppress their old selves and some people and events may force them to change the way they behave in order to survive in society. But, in their head, they are still the same, I bet. I know I am. Some things just never go away.
I often wish someone big came along in my life and changed the way I saw things. I am always temporarily stunned by a novel or a really interesting person, and in a way I always want to emulate the main character of the story or that person I met. And I do, successfully, for a while. There are things I wanted to be — reserved, quiet, observing, perceptive — but, however hard I tried to make myself become them, I couldn’t change the person I was. Some say that I barely speak and that I have a hostile look in my eye.. okay, scratch that, everyone says I look intimidating. I think that even the most aloof person in the world is not an island. I like to joke that “no man is an island, but I am a peninsula”: attached to the world, yet keeping a distance. I wish someone older, well-read and more experienced with life than I approached me and taught me what he knows. Yes, he: I know maybe two women I ever considered to be wise (one of them, in fact, is here on Tumblr; the other is my mother).
I yearn for those smooth nights with a drink, a smoke, and a nice place with comfortable couches, where I will sit and have long conversations with my older, experienced friend and mentor. I feel that the rest of my life must be spent in club-like places, where people in groups are having a good time chatting, drinking, perhaps playing cards or even dominoes, and just enjoying quiet jazz music. They are the people of another time who do not belong in this millennium, and so they gather in one of these few places where the air preserved the old times’ aura. I want to travel, and not always alone. I want that person to show me worlds, his own and foreign.
In conclusion, I want to restate that I have not met anyone who changed my life. I’d like to think that I have not met them yet. In the meantime, I’ll work on myself so my ardor for knowledge can match that of my mentor. What would he be, if not my mentor, if he will change my life, consciously or not? I’d like to think so. I’m very curious to meet someone whose intellect is felt strongly in his presence, and to whom I can subordinate safely. Let’s hope I get what I want.

Dear Natalie,

I see you now almost every Monday and Wednesday, but we do not speak. That is alright; you helped me out when I first met you, and it made me feel better about the fool I made of myself that night.
Truth be told, from that party I only speak to Mark, and he was the one to invite me anyway. Everyone else made a big deal out of being over 21 and me being under 18, but you and Mark. In fact, he started to even like me, kind of surprising but also kind of expected… In any case, thank you for not making me feel stupid because I got really high really easily, for laughing at my stupid jokes, and for hugging me good-bye. That made me feel like not everyone in that room thought of me as a drugged up little kid.
Mark always used to say he’d make us hang out again so I get to know you better because you are “the only one in the company worth knowing.” If I was you I’d take that as a great compliment, and at face value. Mark’s a good kid and he makes people feel good about themselves, and he likes making others feel good. I don’t know enough about you to judge what kind of person you are on a daily basis, but hey, they say you can judge people by their friends! I assume you are always such an amiable girl, so thanks for showing your best when I needed it. It’s alright, I suppose, if we never hang out again as you might have been nice to me in spite of, maybe, thinking that I was a retard like everyone else did in that room. No matter what you thought, you did not show it and made me a little bit more confident in a company of grown-ups.

Thanks,

Katya

I find pinky promises absolutely foolish and pointless. I rarely make promises, but if I do I stick to them like my life depends on it. That commitment to promises is exactly the reason I make so few; it’s a neat little cycle. I dislike letting people down, not because someone might judge me, but because it is something I’ve always had in my head that dictated: “Once you promised someone to do something, do it. You took on that liability in front of someone, and now you owe them.”
Truth be told, I make better promises to others than to myself. I don’t do half the things for myself that I say I will. I like doing good unto others, I can say I enjoy it. Sometimes I don’t know how to make it better for someone or what is required of me. Maybe I do not realize the potential in me, because on most days I know what I’m capable of and I know that I’m not doing all that is in my power.
In a way, I’m just damn lazy and I know that part of that potential is what I could do for others and how I could show them that I care about them. I care about people, I just don’t put effort into showing it. I am capable of making and fulfilling more promises than I currently make, but sometimes I’m just too lazy to live [life to the fullest]. I suppose I don’t regret it on most days, for idleness is among my top favorites. Today is one of those beauuutiful warm and breezy days when all I want to do is roll around on my bed, read, and play with my hair. Ain’t no promises I’m makin’ today!
Perhaps I’ll grow to be more.. not so much responsible as filling the big shoes my great genes have got for me. I could prove brilliance in every day if only I wanted. Let’s hope the will comes with age. In the meantime, pinky promises will still be foolish in my mind.