As
I begin this letter, I am already wondering who you are and what I could learn from you. Isn’t that strange? I am meant to be telling you what I have learned about life but I am interested in what you have learned, what you know. I don’t even know where to start. I suppose that is the danger in trying to tell someone the things that you have learned, you suddenly realise that trying to distill these things into sensible, consumable pieces of information that could possibly assist someone else makes them all seem trivial. As though your whole life is small and the lessons even smaller. I suppose it might help you to know, Stranger, that I am a person who is incredibly over confident, when I am confident, and cripplingly under-confident, when I am not feeling confident. It makes me hard for others to understand, maybe you will find this as I go on. The first thing that I have learned is that everything is usually okay. Really. Even when things seem terrible and like they cannot or will not get better, they probably will end soon. Everything is temporary and people are better than you think. Most people would help you if they knew that you needed help. I have met so many people who have helped me, not because I could or would give them anything but because they could, so they did. The second thing, that I am just now realising I have learned, is that people have to know you need help in order to help you. When you’re open with people and face the things you’re struggling with front on and with openness, people understand what you might need from them. It can be scary to expose yourself in that way, but it’s usually worth it. There are way more good people than bad people around. The funny thing is that I learned to first two things when I was so far from home. I moved to another country and proceeded to be more like the person I want to be than I ever have. I think because I didn’t feel restricted by the expectations of people who have always known me. It gave me so much freedom to be someone else, or at least a different version of the same person. So, I would say that is something I have learned; it’s hard 34| The FishBones | Issue #1
