Dear Katharine

November 08, 20xx

Nov. 08, 20xx
4:27 P.M.

Dear Kath,

                   Forgive me for not writing for the past couple of days. It's just been tough.  Every single day I visit Jenna. She still hasn't spoken to me. But I'm not stopping. She will talk, eventually.
                  I have never felt so grim. Everything around me has lost their color. It's like I'm living in a black and white world just like the one in Lois Lowry's novel The Giver. Except in that world the Receiver is the only one who suffers. At first, I thought his character represents Jesus Christ coming to earth as a sacrifice to take our heavy burden. It wasn't the case. The Receiver is indeed a sacrifice. He is alone in carrying the pleasurable and painful recollections to protect the citizens of their community to achieve equality. He is the only one that enjoys, but also the only one who suffers while the men and women who reside in the artificial “perfection” their society invented benefit from the system. The Receiver keeps the memories until he trains someone else to replace him. In the end, he becomes the opposite of Jesus, but he saved his people all the same.
                Unlike the people in that work of literature, my neighbors don't lack emotions, but they do lack one emotion: empathy. I feel like people who have empathy in this neighborhood are like the Receiver. While everyone else is living their lives as normal as possible, Jenna and the ones who love her go through hell, and desperately search for wonderful memories that will save them. Our kapitbahays eat, attend church, laugh and have fun, and it hurts to see them enjoy the benefits of our unjust system while people like us pay for the tradeoffs.
                 I know I shouldn't blame them. I don't understand what to do. There is no manual on how to grieve the right way, no ritual to heal myself from the wounds life inflicted upon me. It just feels easier when I can point finger on someone.
                  Chard told me I'm in a state of “anomie”. He said that it's a condition Emile Durkheim defines as “normlessness”.
                 “How about?” I asked him. “Aren't you in a state of amonie?” I had to ask him for I don't know how he is dealing with the death of so many people in his life.
                 “Anomie. It's anomie not amonie.” Clearly, I haven't done my readings yet because he had to correct me.
                 “I just have to be a man about it,” he answered. That's a lie. I'm sure for he changed so much after his sister died. He's just too proud to admit it. But perhaps because of her death, he has become immune to grief. Sanaol*.
                 By the way, our relationship isn't as exciting as it used to be. I guess we've been so comfortable at each other that it drained some of the romance between us. Sometimes I feel Chard is getting bored of me because he has become quite distant since Kuya Ian's death, and I didn't notice it because I'm too distracted by grief. There's also something that he's hiding from me, and I can feel it in my bones. I hope it's just a feeling. But what if it's not a feeling? What if he's annoyed by my rants and crying? He told me before that mutual respect and independence are keys to avoid toxicity. What if he leaves me because, unlike him who can deal with this craziness, I'm becoming dependent each day? What if he thinks I'm toxic because my psychological state is poisoning his mental health? What if this is the beginning of our end? But like before, these might just all be in my head. I'll have to talk to him about this.
                  Mama just knocked on my door. This must be the signal that we're leaving to shop for the opening of the second semester tomorrow. I have to go.

*
Sanaol- an expression that means you covet what someone else has