hopefully, mika

or, a letter that’s not about healing but also is

Dear Becca,

Thanks to you and the powers that be (i.e. the mailman only taking credit card payments for custom fees), I’ve been to the post office twice in a week. What an anomaly.

I don’t know why it’s so scary to go there. There’s always a sense of anticipation whenever I walk through the doors of the drugstore where the post office is tucked away in the back.

Will the line be long?

Will the clerk be nice?

Will I embarrass myself?

There was only ever one time the line stretched for a whole aisle, and that was years ago.

But it still takes me months to muster up the courage to go there anyway and drop off whatever letters and gifts I’ve finally put together.

And then everything is fine.

I feel that way about most things in life, but you know that.

I don’t just make a mountain out of the mole hill.

I carve out an entire mountain range for myself— my very own version of the Canadian Rockies.

The day after my birthday, I had my first panic attack in five years. My brother had to talk me out of packing my suitcase, which I honestly hadn’t fully unpacked yet. He blocked my path and I couldn’t walk out the door while my bones sang that I should.

One winter, maybe seven years ago, I walked out the front door and found myself rushing along the street, hood drawn up and through my tears, the world was a watercolour splash of concrete and permafrost.

My brother and dad went after me. I don’t remember much of that night.

Coming down from that high, that flood of emotions, has gotten easier over time. It doesn’t make it ache any less, or wipe away the exhaustion. I just bounce back quicker.

But I don’t want to have to bounce back from anything.

I’ve started posting about my books more, which is what I had wanted to do last year. I feel that same spike of fear that I do when I step out of the car and cross the parking lot to the drugstore slash post office, or when I think someone’s mad at me.

And then things are fine.

I wish my sadness was more like my fear.

Both feel woven into me. Except the fear comes in lightning strikes and my sadness is the sea, sometimes threatening to swallow me whole, sometimes clear and still like a glass floor.

Today, the sadness is choppy like that day in August when I nearly hurled into the Salish Sea.

Thankfully, I can recognize joy now whenever it rears its head. It comes to the surface more and more, to take in the air. Occasionally, it will even breach.

This is no secret. Opening your gifts has been worth the fear and it has calmed the blue in me.

You could send me an acorn in a cardboard box and I would rejoice.

I miss writing letters, miss choosing which roll of washi tape to decorate the envelope or which dried petals to give away.

Mostly, selfishly, I miss getting letters, too.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is thank you for forcing me into the post office, for letting me push through that fear, old friend of mine, and giving me something sweet to cut open.

Today, the sadness is choppy. I know it’ll subside. It always does. And if I make another mountain range, at least I’ll find it beautiful the further I am from it.

hopefully,

mika