An Open Letter To The Universe

Dear Universe,

You are a true enigma. We know that you want us to have a good life — that is the only thing we truly understand about you, but you have a strange way of showing it. We understand that you do the things that you do because you want us to have the best life, but sometimes those things hurt.

I know that pain is unavoidable, that hurt isn’t something that you’d hide from like a six-year-old hides from their friend as they play Hide-and-Seek. It sucks sometimes. We’re not going to lie to you.

There are moments where you do (or don’t do something) that really stresses us out, makes us angry, or makes us want to cry. Those moments make us feel as though you don’t have our best interests in mind. It’s like you want us to have crap lives as we sit in our bedrooms wondering why in the world you could do something like that to us.

I mean, oh my god, Universe, you really make us furious sometimes. Every now and then we find ourselves screaming at you, whether out loud, in our heads, or through writing, aggressive painting, or by playing our instruments louder and louder until there’s a complaint from the neighbors on the second floor.

Everyone has their own way of screaming to you, of cursing you out, of giving up on you—but we’re all trying to say the same thing. Why?

Why is this happening? Why hasn’t it ended? Why did you hurt him? Why did you hurt me? Why aren’t I successful yet? Why did I fail? Why haven’t you given me my dream home? Why do I have to keep working if I’ve already worked hard? Why do you hurt me? Why have you put me through this situation? WHY DO YOU HURT ME?

You cause this weight in our chest to rise, and we wish we could just grab that weight and rip it apart from us, but we can’t. No matter how hard we try, we can’t.

Sometimes, we hate you. For everything.

And still…

We love you. Why?

Your plans to get us to where we want are not what we have in mind. We want what we want now, but 10 years later, we still don’t have it. Why? What else do we have to do to get what we want. We’ve tried everything, and more importantly, we try every single freaking day, but still, we get nothing.

You make us so mad, but we still look to you to guide us, to give us what we want. We are still grateful for you.

We ask why we still love you when we can also hate you, but we all know the answer. It’s because the pros outweigh the cons. It’s because deep down in our souls we understand that this is how it was meant to be.

We hear it over and over again, we even repeat it to ourselves over and over again. I didn’t get this job because there’s a better one around the corner. We haven’t gotten our dream home because it’s barely being built. I didn’t get to go on vacation because I can’t afford it, but I know that soon I’ll be able to go to where I’ve always wanted.

It always ends with one sentence: I just have to remain patient.

Even though we don’t have what we want, we will always trust you, Universe because we believe that you do have our best interests in mind.

We’re grateful to you because you’ve caused us pain, but you’ve also brought us euphoria, excitement, love, pride, and every other good feeling in the world that you could think of.

We’re grateful to you because we are alive and breathing, and sometimes there’s nothing greater to be thankful for than that.

We do love you, Universe. We are thankful for all the good things that you’ve already brought us. We love you because you’ve placed great people in our life, because you’ve taught us about patience and hard work, because you’ve given us a chance to live out our dreams, because while there may be bad in the world, there is also good.

We will never forget that good. We promise.

Love,

Everyone