There’s a new update for Letters. I know I could have written this in the Author’s note but I felt like this deserves a separate spotlight of its own. Chapter 9 of Letters is solely a chapter about supportive friendships.
Growing up, my parents were people who led with their head a lot and they taught us to do the same. Anything we want to do should come with a pros and cons list. I guess that’s where my overthinking tendencies come from.
When I started questioning my sexuality, the biggest con on my list was ‘no one could ever know about this’. It was a crippling fear that prevented me from establishing any meaningful friendships. I was (and sometimes still can be) the type of person who will know everything about you and have you know nothing about me in return. This didn’t come from anything other than the fear of being looked at differently.
Chapter 9 is dedicated to the friends I have now made in my early twenties. The ones who cried with me in the car when I came out to them for the first time with tears in my eyes. The ones who defy distance and time.
And although the women are amazing, this one is dedicated mostly to the men I am lucky to call my friends. It’s one thing to be accepting in an accepting society… but it takes guts to stand up against a patriarchal society (a society that essentially gives them all rights and no consequences. A society that they can simply live in and ignore others’ struggles to fit in) to support the people they love. To the men who rebel against privilege. To the men who are gentle in their power.
I love them and the world deserves more of them.
Side note: this in no way implies that my parents were bad parents. They’re only humans experiencing life for the first time like the rest of us. They’re humans with their own traumas and coping mechanisms and they thought that by teaching us those coping mechanisms they would be protecting us.