Wow.

A read­er sent me this let­ter (post­ed with her per­mis­sion, of course):

Almost a year after I had man­aged to leave the island behind, the room, the floor, the sheets, the rape — I acci­dent­ly end­ed up on your blog entry called “The begin­ning to the end” and it changed my world. It awoke feel­ings inside of me that I had for a years time tried to sup­press and scare off so that I nev­er again would open up to any­one, nev­er trust any­one and there­for nev­er end up in the same sit­u­a­tion again. At that time, all men were a poten­tial threath to me.

Reading and watch­ing that very blo­gen­try have had such a great impact on my life and will to become ‘myself’ again, to reclaim my body and to dare to move towards feel­ing and being ‘beau­ti­ful’ again. Your video grant­ed me the sen­sa­tion of how sin­cere, pure and giv­ing love and affec­tion tru­ly are when it’s shared and not forced. It made me remem­ber blocked out feel­ings and sit­u­a­tions and it made me start to long for some­thing that I had com­plete­ly shut out for over a year.

I have been want­i­ng to write you this email for quite some time, but I havent been sure of myself or if the “new” me (which is the old in fact) would sur­vive and I did­nt want to make this into a sun­shine sto­ry if it real­ly was­nt — but after many down­hills, tri­als and tribu­la­tions, the­r­a­phy and social inter­ac­tion, I am there, I am back and I am stand­ing strong again. Nothing will ever be the same, but at least I made the right choice, for me. I have always been lifelov­ing in over­load and even if I am only halfway there yet, it is still enough to keep me going.

I still watch that video every now and then, to remind myself that any­thing is pos­si­ble and that you can recieve “help” from the most unex­pect­ed sources. It used to make me cry, now it makes me smile instead, isnt that beau­ti­ful? I know per­fect­ly well that you nev­er meant to post that entry for me, but it helped me in one of the most dif­fi­cult times in my life and for that I will be for­ev­er grate­ful. Thank you.

Yours sin­cer­ly,
Emma

I’m at a loss for words.

12 comments

  1. And this has made me real­ize I must start writ­ing again. One just nev­er knows the good one does.

  2. I was won­der­ing why you had an hia­tus of over a month.

  3. While I haven’t had the same cal­i­bre of such an expe­ri­ence, I think I found your blog at the right time, too.

    Sometimes, when I feel pan­ic bub­bling in my chest, I’ll read through some of your posts and feel expo­nen­tial­ly bet­ter, and I close the win­dow with a sense of hope that tomor­row will work itself out.

  4. PS. Thank you.

    PPS. What an amaz­ing let­ter.

  5. Wow…it must be an unbe­liev­able com­pli­ment to be able to touch some­one so deeply. Keep up the amaz­ing writ­ing and I’m real­ly look­ing for­ward to your show :)

  6. @MK — Interesting. At the moment, it’s hard for me to under­stand why some­one would feel bet­ter after read­ing my posts, because I cer­tain­ly don’t feel right, right now. Maybe I come off with a cer­tain amount of hope that I’m not con­scious of myself.

    @trolley — Yeah, it’s a very nice feel­ing to know that I was able to affect some­one in a pos­i­tive way, with­out even mean­ing to.

  7. People come off feel­ing bet­ter after read­ing your posts for the sim­ple rea­son that there is joy in know­ing some­one else is just as baf­fled by this code of a world as they are.

    (And I had no idea you ever had read me, which makes me feel even bet­ter.)

  8. That makes a lot of sense. It feels bet­ter know­ing you’re not alone in this world.

  9. Don’t be. It were your words that brought her peace.

  10. I’ve been deal­ing with a break up for months now and I’ve been on and off of your blog as well. I find it very com­fort­ing to read some of the posts and com­ments.

    Thanks for putting this blog togeth­er. I’m get­ting inspired to start my own how­ev­er my English vocab­u­lary is not as strong as yours and often times I find it dif­fi­cult to express my emo­tions and feel­ings.

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