Message in a Bottle [LGBTQ+] [ONC 2024]

Letter #6

Dear Samuel,

For a moment I considered not writing this later. I thought about burning them, pretending I never wrote back to you, and forgetting that you even existed, but I can't do that. I want to get to know you and your life, to know about your family in the same way you have heard parts of mind, but I know now that it can't be like that.

You deserve your secrets in the same way I have mine.

To be honest, I don't know what I would do if I didn't have you to write to. Although I've never been a wordsmith, and certainly don't view words in the same way you do, it's comforting to write it all down. I have written and rewritten this letter a dozen times because there are some things I know I shouldn't write. Writing them down, even if no one ever reads them, has gone a long way to silence my mind.

Your bit about saying a lot in a few words is interesting. I've always found books boring and my mind wandered too much to have the concentration to finish one. I think writing these letters has given me a newfound interest in the written word.

At least I can write down what I can't say, and there is a lot I wish I could say.

I don't hate the idea of getting to know each other beyond the obvious, but I'm not a very interesting person. My hopes, dreams, and wishes aren't anything extravagant. They're just normal dreams everyone else has. You'll soon come to realise that I'm quite a boring person. You said you wouldn't be surprised if I stopped writing back, well the same works both ways.

If you find me to be too boring, feel free to cut me off. I won't mind.

You asked me why I didn't think I'd ever be able to make a difference in this world through my science of mathematics interests and the answer is simple. My papa doesn't want me to be anything other than a farmer. Since he was a farmer, and his papa was a farmer, and so on, it means I have to be one too. He forgets that I struggle to lift a bale of hay and hate mucking out the stables.

It's funny, I love being in nature but I hate toiling in a field for hours on end. There is nothing I love more than sitting by the pond and feeling the sun on my skin and listening to the birds in the trees, but when I'm standing in a field running a rake through the ground I want to be anywhere else.

Why don't you read as much as you used to? Is it the same reason I can't make waves in science and mathematics the way I want to?

Yours,

Eli

~~~

First Published - April 14th, 2024