letter writing
Letter writing is something I loved to do as a child: for a five-or-six-year period, I wrote to my Kuya who lived in the Philippines, every single week, sometimes twice in one day. I also had a pen pal in the Philippines with whom I maintained correspondence for a good couple of years before I got too busy with volleyball and gained a little more of a social life as a teeny bopper. Around the same time, I also stopped writing to my Kuya.
Each letter to him started:
Dear Kuya,
I love and miss you.
And often ended the same way as well:
When you’re done reading this, please put this letter back in the envelope and save it.
Love,
Sugar
I treasured my Sanrio stationery, back when it was still made in Japan and sold in its own boutiques. (It wasn’t licensed to discount department stores until the aughts.) The thought of the pretty, matching paper and envelopes getting tossed in the trash just felt wrong. I saved some from my favorite sets that I had decided would never get used, the word “archive” still unknown to me at the time. Supposedly, my Kuya has two backpacks’ worth of letters that I wrote to him from the age of six to eleven.
The physical act of writing made me feel less lonely as an outlet for self-expression. I was often bored at my parents’ real estate office (which inspired this movement of Antonym) where there was an abundance of office supplies. I even had my own desk and name plate!
I kept copious notes on clipboards for clubs I was starting, e.g., The Christ Club, and The Unicorn Club like in Sweet Valley Twins, wrote in several diaries secured with tiny padlocks, and made my own greeting cards. I often kept the cards because I was so proud of them.
I realize that at a young age, writing was something I did for my own satisfaction, not trying to achieve anything beyond whatever I ended up with. And penning an idea, a desire, increased its potential for reality.
Pen and paper still make me feel a sense of safety and control. I have three planners that serve different functions, start all my scores by hand, dedicate a notebook to each individual project, and begin and end the day by transcribing my thoughts.
Journaling is the most consistent form of writing I do now. In the morning, I write at least one page in an A5 notebook, and in the evening, I jot a couple lines in my five-year diary, a practice I’ve maintained since 2009. While journaling is not a letter in its literal sense, I feel as if I’m writing to myself at various points in time: when I write about yesterday, I am analyzing what’s happened; when I list my hopes, dreams, and fears, I peek into tomorrow. It’s a form of time travel, with origins in the present, windows into the past, and messages to the future.
