Why writing letters helps you heal
How to start writing letters, and how it will help you get over it.
As I have mentioned before in my previous article, writing letters is a great way to help you cope with your issues with people. You address them to those you want to talk to but don’t feel comfortable with in person, you let those feelings seep into your words on the page, and then you deal with at least some of it.
Here, I decided to explain another step of writing the letters. What often helps is going back to re-read the letters and approaching them from a 3rd person perspective, as if you are not the one who wrote all those feelings out. What I find is that it often helps me understand my feelings in a different way than before: maybe I was being too petty, too hormonal, too exaggerated. Or maybe I was reasonable.
That is when it becomes clear that those letters, at times, do come at moments of intensity, and when those happen I don’t know what feelings I can trust. Returning to the letters allows me to understand how influential my feelings are on my behaviour, and how other people’s actions easily affect my temper.
Not only, but it is always nice to look back to see how much I have grown since the last time I wrote one. The difference is often subtle, maybe my humour’s changed or the way I write varies, but the progression of emotions is clear. The best ones are the sequential ones, those to people who have more than one letter, which allows me to see how my feelings have changed towards them with time. Because, though we hate to admit it, we can’t really remember exactly what we felt at every moment. To the boy I’m annoyed at, for example, I can’t even remember a time when we could stand each other. But I do remember us spending a lot of time together, and all I wonder is how I was able to do it. The girl I’m indifferent to today was once the one I loved the most, the best friend in the world, and now we don’t talk anymore.
The truth is that feelings change so much, and how you feel now can often (though not always) influence your memory of the past, including your feelings towards it. Some people I still look back dearly, reminiscing how lovely a relationship we had regardless of how I feel now. Others I wonder how we were even able to stand next to each other. But there was a time when I really liked them, and I wish I had written letters so that I could remember why I felt the way I did.
That’s what I do now. I write to remember why I feel the way I feel now. Towards everyone, even the ones I know will remain in my life for a long time, because even those sentiments will change, and maybe they will leave.
So write, look back, learn about your feelings, see how much you’ve grown, and use these to heal. Read your letters for closure when you can’t have none, for comfort when you can’t find any: because, liking it or not, writing is one of the best ways to heal your wounds and process your feelings.
