Dear Francis of the Future

Dear Francis of the future, whatever year you choose or happen to read this again,

Today, September 28 of 2015, was a day you decided to not do anything. You don’t have a job, a real one anyway, one that society deemed the kind of job everyone should get, like a desolate cubicle where you smash away at the keys, filing paperwork for people you’ve never really known or met, where you wear your suit and tie even if no one is looking, much less cared. You used to work for one these kinds of workplaces albeit more alive and less funded and you could wear your plain t-shirts. It was a humanitarian organization and you told yourself for most of your life that you would work for these people so you could feel more connected to the world you so desperately craved to stay away from. After nine months of smashing away at the keys (that never seemed to complain about being smashed or reprimanded), you still feel empty and unaccomplished and for some reason, you feel less and less connected to other people and you’ve become more intoxicated with the concept of socializing with strangers.

I don’t know what you’ve accomplished now, but I wish you are in a better place than you were on this day. Your sister just woke up at 10:07 a.m., an hour after you did. You stayed up all night, working on VSCO presets that fit your photos. You tried to be creative like you used to, because you were afraid that if you stayed on the path of Excel spreadsheets (which you also love, by the way), the formulaic, systematic side of your brain will eat away the other half. And by extension, you were afraid you will become orderly and well-put and boring and these are the things you do not want to become, even if it meant your life will have less problems to worry about. You are creative and your imagination is wild like the forest that naturally burns in the summer—relentless and furious and almost destructive. Natural forest fires are a process of nature to destroy and accommodate rebirth, and I think creative processes are there so you can let go of your burdens and give room for more and you can carry all of them as Atlas carries the world and these masochistic desires to torture yourself with uncontrollable urges to erupt is the only way you can survive the pain of being alive.

I feel sorry for you today, because until now, you’ve never truly understood what you are here for and why all this is necessary. You are not suicidal, far from it, and it’s a good thing, a really good thing that you aren’t. But for that same reason, it’s also antagonizing, because you choose to be alive without knowing why and there lies all your anguish. Everyone around you is chasing after the world and you are running away from it because the world is too much for you and, at the same time, never enough. The world doesn’t appeal to you anymore. You took a sip, then a glug, then all the way down, and you spit it all out and you reached for the back of your throat to induce vomiting to expunge everything you accepted from the world. And until now, you are still at the point where you are breathless from a near-death experience and your veins have shot blood to your eyes and the aftertaste of vomit still lingers in your mouth.

You’ve given up on the world and yet you are still here and there is no way you can survive all this without giving in to its demands, even a little bit, even just a sliver and a whiff and a hint of its calling. And you are here, writing, because you don’t know what you should do. And you are afraid that if you choose wrong, you will have to go through the process again.

I’m sorry, Francis, but today, the 28th of September of 2015, not even I can help you.