A Letter to Stephanie

Dear Stephanie,

How are you doing? I know you don't know me and I'll be lying if I tell you that I know you. Truth be told, today, Wednesday, April 30, 2014, I stumbled upon your contest and I thought why not? Let's write her a letter. It sounds like a good practice exercise especially since the past few days, I have been feeling like my imagination left me. I'm hoping that by writing this letter to you, I will find some clue or some trace that could lead me to my imagination's whereabouts.

Let me start by saying that without my imagination, I feel like a grown up constantly being showered with responsibilities, but believe me, when I was younger I loved to be showered with chores and assignments - I found it refreshing. Especially, since the showers I took were quick ones, it was nothing I could not handle. Once I was done washing myself out my duties, it was time to hop in bed and sleep. However, out of lately - I feel like I've been spending too many hours under a stream of responsibilities that seem to never come to an end.

Let me try to explain myself so you could understand me better. My life currently feels like a walk-in-shower, a small room with a crystal door extending from the floor up to the ceiling which impedes the water of responsibilities to be spilled anywhere else other than in that room. So I'm in there, in the shower. And as the water falls on my head and on my spine dispersing throughout my body, I feel somehow relaxed.

However, after spending too much time in there, I start feeling the water hitting my skin each time a little harder than the last one until it aches. I start feeling overwhelmed and anxious. I try to twist the knob to impede the water from running out all on me, but from all the times I have turned on and off the water, I broke the knob.

I also attempt to get out of that room but the crystal door is stuck. All this water that is falling on my head, it's as if it's making my hair fall. I feel the pressure on my scalp. Then if it's not enough, the drain on the floor becomes clogged. And the water of responsibilities continue falling and rising in that room, until I reach a point in which I feel more anxious and more overwhelmed. I don't know what do to.

I just know that I feel like the streams of responsibilities are soaking me to the point that my skin is starting to become wrinkled, but more importantly, I feel like I am drowning and I don't know what to do. How can I ask for help, if I feel stuck in that room? I feel like I am floating in obligations and sooner or later, I'm just going to sink until I find myself submerged in all that water while touching the floor of the shower room.

Do you see what I mean? This is how not having my imagination feels like. I feel stuck. I feel like I'm drowning. ( I feel somehow bald. . . ) I just hope that if my life really is like a walk-in-shower in which all this water of responsibilities are accumulating to the point that I'm drowning in them, that I'll just sink to the very bottom of the shower floor so I can notice all of my fallen hairs in the clogged drain and pull all of them out to unclog it. Who knows, perhaps until then - once all that water finally starts to be drained from the room, I may find me, myself, and my imagination once again, united while drying each other out of all the responsibilities that almost drowned us. I guess until then, I may find her to be each of the fallen hairs that left part of my scalp to later on be re-united as my hair grows back to its normal length.

Sincerely,

Lucero

A paradox, my imagination is the one that helps me keep going and the very same one that makes me feel as if I'm drowning.