I couldn’t do it anymore. Dealing with people is just so exhausting. I don’t have the heart to engage with people. There is only four people I feel worthy of my time and airtime, Mama, Dad, Arnie my best friend, and my sibling. I saw the ‘shrink’ as you had asked and he was helpful. I was excited, like I was on a sugar high for three hours, I wanted to study and understand myself better, meet and hang out with friends, then Friday morning happened.

The alarm went off and I had no enthusiasm to engage. None. I lifted my head from my pillow and there was nothing to look forward too. I realized that what propelled me for those ten years after quitting my job was debt. I was 40,000 USD in debt; you know how I got there. Once that debt was cleared a burden was lifted, my drive was lifted and then I allowed passion to take over. Passion drove me, it drove me alright. It drove me to the grave, it failed to drive me into submission to make money and a living like debt did. Soon that flame died. And I had nothing to fight for.

Fighting for people, ha! We romanticize what Nelson Mandela did and Martin Luther King Jr. did. There was nothing sexy about it. They got beat up for what they believed in, they believed in so strongly they gave up everything else that mattered. My fellow compatriots are so not worth the fight, the bloody freedom fighters languish in poverty and you expect me to fight for someone else, hahahahaha! Please! That is the joke of the century….they can all go and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.

I am tired of the desire to fight for people; be the “strong” one, the “voice” of the people, caring is expensive more so emotionally and psychologically than it is financially. And I am tired of having sleepless nights. Then why not stay for family right? Well they love me, but in all honesty, they are adults. They can care for themselves. They have their own families, Mum and Dad are having a great retirement together. My sibling is stuck with his own family, in love, raising his four little angels; I will definitely miss like crazy, especially little Lisa.

They are busy living, my life seems to be a car stuck in “park”, it can’t shift gears at all, and first gear failed ages ago. So I have been stuck and watched people’s lives go on around me. I tried lifting my head from the clouds; clouds that overwhelmed my stagnated life. I felt more envy than joy for people I considered my friends. School actually is what kept me going the last four years, great lecturers; free counseling sessions that made steady steps to recovery. But something just seemed to have snapped. Gone, no more, not worth it.

I am aroused just thinking about it, I got everything set, and it will be a new great step once I wrap up this letter to you all, that I love. Don’t worry about me, I finally found a good jolt some clarity. Finally I know right. I hope you will all be happy for me. Mum and Dad the one thing that I regret not being able to do for you, is give you grandchildren. I hope in the next life I would be able to do that.

Don’t worry, I am not too worried about where I am going, I feel peace and joy and overwhelming love when I think about it. Soon, sooner, I will be where I need to be, where I fought to be for the past six years.

I love you all, don’t ever doubt that. I have that goofy image of me attached to the note and my voice recorder, just press play, it’s like I never left.

Kisses and hugs.

And just like that, a wobbling sound of wood against the floor, a sigh and a snap. Arnold was gone, his letter steadily floating from his lifeless hand to the ground beneath his dangling feet.