Dear Friend,
It's strange to use that term with you. Are we friends? We've known each other our whole lives yet we've barely scratched each other's surfaces. What is it that stops us from digging deeper? It isn't fear, but a sort of apathy--the same kind that lets you walk alone on the streets without meeting anybody's gaze.
The city stares back at me like that. I feel invisible when I trudge past the rows of silent houses, the strip malls and identical townhouses. We're all facade. Nobody bothers to ask us the questions that matter.
I live in a place where people of different races live side by side. Sometimes it leads to interesting conversations, but more often it just plain divides us. More surfaces, more borders. This place is touted as utopia back home, and it more or less lives up to that idea. It's utopia if you've lived in a dystopia your whole life.
But any utopia fails because people fail themselves. We fail our own creeds, our own principles. Or else the creed fails us. And maybe I can live with some people's casual prejudice. But not my own. It's not something we've ever talked about, have we? How we believe. How we catch ourselves dismissing or mocking people for the most irrational of reasons. How we burn with shame afterwards at words we cannot take back.
I've looked up to you for the longest time. But I'm not blind to the tensions that exist between us. Maybe there's a reason we don't bother talking about deeper things. So many truths unsaid, so many little hurts buried. I trust you to keep your tongue as I hold mine.
As for surfaces, well. They exist for a reason, too. I put on a brave face for you and for the world. And sometimes I believe the lie just a little.
Soldiering on,
Mayumi
It's strange to use that term with you. Are we friends? We've known each other our whole lives yet we've barely scratched each other's surfaces. What is it that stops us from digging deeper? It isn't fear, but a sort of apathy--the same kind that lets you walk alone on the streets without meeting anybody's gaze.
The city stares back at me like that. I feel invisible when I trudge past the rows of silent houses, the strip malls and identical townhouses. We're all facade. Nobody bothers to ask us the questions that matter.
I live in a place where people of different races live side by side. Sometimes it leads to interesting conversations, but more often it just plain divides us. More surfaces, more borders. This place is touted as utopia back home, and it more or less lives up to that idea. It's utopia if you've lived in a dystopia your whole life.
But any utopia fails because people fail themselves. We fail our own creeds, our own principles. Or else the creed fails us. And maybe I can live with some people's casual prejudice. But not my own. It's not something we've ever talked about, have we? How we believe. How we catch ourselves dismissing or mocking people for the most irrational of reasons. How we burn with shame afterwards at words we cannot take back.
I've looked up to you for the longest time. But I'm not blind to the tensions that exist between us. Maybe there's a reason we don't bother talking about deeper things. So many truths unsaid, so many little hurts buried. I trust you to keep your tongue as I hold mine.
As for surfaces, well. They exist for a reason, too. I put on a brave face for you and for the world. And sometimes I believe the lie just a little.
Soldiering on,
Mayumi
