The Echo Chronicles: Volume 1: Letter 4
Dear Person,
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about myself in the last few months, and I’m okay now. (I still have acne, and I think I’m getting fat.) So yeah, as you can see, I’m a lot better.
You know, sometimes, I pretend to have a vast intelligence, just because that’s what everyone expects out of me, but there’s a lot of things that I’ll never understand. Entropy, for example. Atomic isotopes. Why I can talk to a hundred strangers, but not the boy I like. The reason why my parents will yell and scream at each other, but never give a second thought about separation- how mankind as a whole functions, I suppose.
I’m supposed to be the smart girl; the one who has all the answers. Was that a unanimous decision among my classmates? A simple poll to which every answer was the same? How do I respond to the collective gasps when I say the three fatal words: “I don’t know”?
This world I live in is strange. No one ever tells you how to act, you just know. You learn. People say animals have natural instincts, but so do we. When I was little, my mother told me to never be ashamed of not understanding, but it’s honestly a cutthroat world out there if you show any weakness. I’ve realized that already. It’s tough.
It’s strange. I used to be really dramatic, but now I’m not. I think I’ll start writing to you again. It’s good therapy.
“You don’t really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around – and why his parents will always wave back.” – William D. Tammeus
Penelope Havensworth 