This is an open letter, a letter that I am writing to someone I used to know with the hope that she might be able to find comfort and solace by turning herself inward and take the time to listen to what I'll have to say.

You feel lost.

You fought for god knows how long and so hard only for everything to come back crashing down on yourself. There are just so many things you've given up along the way just to live up to your own expectations -- and unknowingly lost a part of yourself throughout the years too. Everything just seems so vague and you can't bear to look at yourself just to realize that you will never become the person you pictured yourself to be. A disappointment, that's what you think of yourself.

You gave up fighting. There's no will to live nor to fight because you think the world crushed you so bad and you’re defeated. A person can only take so much before they collapse, am I right? And there's just really nothing else for you to defend. You have already lost yourself. Your spark is gone. Giving up is the last choice. So you turn yourself off, going through motions of being alive but you're dead on the inside. You see everyone around you living and striving but there's.... you. Doing the bare minimum in your life just to get by. But dead.

You kept hearing people telling, "You can do this. You're stronger than this". They don't believe you when you say you just can't go anymore further than this. They don't understand. It's not just about you lacking the strength (bukan malas tapi penat) to try. It's just you've never been this exhausted, physically and mentally. If you could gather the all the strength left inside of you to take one more step and to try one more time, you would. But you don't. Every word of encouragement ends up hurting yourself even more so you decided to withdraw yourself and stop running to someone else for comfort and validation. Well, it's not really hard when you notice that they don't care about you enough to give two fucks about your problems. It's easier when you know you're always on your own from the very start. 

It's been almost a month. You're still surviving and I guess that's more than enough.

Don't worry. I'm not going to say it's not the end of the world and that you don't have the rights to be upset over everything that is happening. As a matter of fact, you're absolutely right to feel this way. You are entitled to scream and cry if you want to. But, it's been almost a month. A month of you worrying and crying over where you'll end up in the future, what kind of career you'll fall into and what kind of a person you'll become. It's like being in a null state, lacking direction and a clear knowledge of who you are. It feels like your whole body is wrapped in a plastic. It's suffocating and you can't move.

But the unknown identity which is trapped in this plastic needs to give up. And by giving up, you need to start to accept things. You need to acknowledge not everything is in your control. You are still you despite being unable to become the 'perfect' idea of yourself. You are responsible for making the most out of whatever that is in front of you, to make sure the patterns of the past do not need to be repeated and you are under no obligation to perpetuate what was.

Start over. I know it's easier being said than done. You see no hope in doing so because no matter how hard you try, it's never good enough for anyone, for anything. But it's never about being on top nor being first. It's not about comparing yourself and your life journey to others. You're enough. It’s fine to take the longer route. Starting over is for you to learn new tricks and let go of the old ones. To better and improve yourself. It's like resetting your phone so it can start working properly again. It's for you to gain a new self, a consciousness in getting up and build yourself again with greater depth and an altered perspective after drifting along into the nothingness, losing yourself.

Until when? Until it is time to give up again. Then, you start finding yourself. Again.

As long as your heart keeps beating, you need to keep living. Or at least try to. It's a vicious cycle. You have to do a lot of it in the future. There's going to be more and more reasons for you to relapse. But, it's okay to give up as long as you promise to find yourself again.