Dear Emma, 

Is it snowing over there as much as it is here? December arrived in waves of fog, and it hasn’t left any room for my mind to rest. The streets, now white and cold, feel emptier than ever. I don’t know if it’s nostalgia, the cold, the season, or simply these days of the year, but an unstable, almost nervous feeling has taken hold of me—one I can’t, or perhaps don’t want to, name. I only know that I needed to write to someone; and I miss you, Emma, so let me write to you, and forgive me if I’m repetitive, as I tell you about the past few months in which I’ve felt this agony.

Everything was fine in the summer, I promise. Heat is gentler with my heart—it treats me well and keeps me steady. But as soon as autumn began, and the leaves started turning slightly orange, I began to feel this uncertainty that suffocates me whenever I stay inside my own head for too long.

It must also be because in August I reached five years since I left. Yes, Emma—five years. Five years in which I haven’t spoken my own language, in which my jokes have been misunderstood, and in which I have to translate my sarcastic comments far too quickly. Emma, I don’t quite know how to write these things because the truth is they embarrass me a little, but sometimes I feel… that no one truly understands me. That people would love me more if I could speak to them in my language and not in theirs. That there is a veil—a thin but sharp wall—that separates me from people who know someone who doesn’t fully exist, because this language is not mine, and if it isn’t mine, then the person they know cannot truly be me—at least not completely. Do you understand what I mean, Emma? It’s as if words become distorted once I translate them before they leave my mouth, and in doing so, I turn into someone who carries my name, looks exactly like me, but isn’t me. I can’t be.

Is this stupid, Emma? This feeling that the people who have known me for five years actually know the wrong version of me—a person who hesitates before speaking, when in reality I am completely impulsive; someone who hardly ever makes jokes, because by the time I remember how to say them, the moment has passed and it’s too late. I just laugh, Emma. I laugh, and sometimes I laugh at my own jokes—the ones I tell in my head but never out loud, because they’re never fast enough to reach my tongue. And instead of feeling happy, it makes me sad. And I feel stupid and hypocritical, because my friends will never know what I’m laughing at, and because they don’t fully know me, they won’t be able to tell when my laughter is fake and when it’s real.

I’m sorry, Emma, for filling you with my noisy melancholies. But sometimes I can’t help feeling sad because I believe—yes, I truly believe—that no one will ever understand me the way you do. That no one will understand my language again—not just the words, but the way I form sentences, the true sound of my laughter, my awkward pauses, my unfunny jokes, my hilarious comments. They won’t know the real sound of my voice, because my tone is different in their language; and they will go through life thinking that the person in front of them is the real me, and not a worn-out, ghostly copy, desperately hoping they’ll see beyond the veil.

And just like friendships, love too. Another year is ending, Emma—another year of soul-deep exhaustion and a terrified, infernal sob that refuses to leave my throat. A desperate, inevitable scream, begging for it all to end. I’m tired of being alone, Emma; it’s terrible to be alone in a country where people don’t understand what that word means. Where people are less warm when you explain that the reason for your sadness is “I feel lonely,” because this culture is used to being without company. That’s why the cold seeps so deeply into my bones, I think—because warmth is scarce. The warmth of a home that feels like mine. The warmth of a hug that doesn’t feel empty.

It was in mid-July. I started to like a man. A real man, Emma—not like the ones I’ve liked before. A modest and educated man, courteous and kind. Despite the language, I felt he understood me when he spoke to me; do you know how calming it was not to have to explain myself all the time?

I met him on the train in mid-February. He was reading a book, and I, curious, asked which one. A Tale of Two Cities, he said. I couldn’t help it—you know how much I love that book—so we talked the entire ride home because he was about to finish it. We talked so much that he got off at my stop, completely forgetting his own. He walked me home that day, and we promised to stay in touch.

I dreamed about him day and night for four days until he finally reached out. I had never felt such warmth as I did during those days when we talked about books; I had never felt so close to obtaining something I didn’t even know I wanted so fiercely. Hours and hours talking about books, then dates in small bookstores. And then, a kiss that brushed against a part of me I thought was fearful and fractured, cowardly and shattered. A kiss that awakened a desire to know the world in a single day. A kiss that knew no language.

And then, silence. An overwhelming silence. After a few dates, poems, hands softly touching on the train, and a language created by two people who seemed to understand each other even when they didn’t speak, silence appeared. The overwhelming silence that has scared me since I was a child, while others were afraid of the dark or spiders. A silence that looks a lot like forgetting.

One day in July, the letters stopped coming. And little by little, the train that had become a friend returned to being a harsh acquaintance I no longer wanted to see. A letter finally arrived in mid-August—he had gotten a job in another city and didn’t have the courage to say goodbye. But Emma, even though the letter was filled with overwhelming guilt, I couldn’t help feeling angry. Why did he get to pretend sadness if he was the one who left without saying a word? Why was he the one begging for understanding for leaving without hesitation, without offering an apology? I felt guilty for not being happy for his job. I felt stupid and deceived for letting someone in who left me holding my heart in my hands, beating endlessly with the uncertainty of a love I couldn’t place anywhere, because the person I wanted to give it to had gone.

Am I that easy to abandon? Does replacement transcend language and culture? Those were the questions I asked myself during August and September, Emma, trying to explain to my mind what had happened. Yes, I know—it was just a man I knew for a few months. And I know there are other men out there. But loneliness lurks, and when one is alone, and one’s language begins to fade into oblivion, and someone arrives who seems to understand everything you say even without translation—then you tell me if it wouldn’t hurt to have that person leave and leave you speaking alone. You tell me if you wouldn’t feel resentment toward someone you thought, for a brief moment, you might have loved.

Everything is uncertain on these white streets, Emma. And that bothers me. So many questions and so few answers. They give no rest to my mind, which uses any excuse to turn my distorted memories against me. And then I miss you, and I miss the little house I had, and I miss my parents and my family and the way my name sounded when you said it. I miss the streets that never had snow, and therefore were never this cold.

And you’ll read this, Emma, and think that I’m only writing to vent. But the truth is that if I don’t let it out, I’ll suffocate before the new year arrives; and I have so many dreams, Emma, that it terrifies me to think I might be the one who prevents myself from reaching them. That this melancholy and sadness that shelter me will never leave me alone, and that I’ll end up throwing all my letters into the fire because I grew tired of writing about nostalgia. I’m afraid that one day I’ll wake up and have forgotten how to write in my own language, or that I’ll simply grow tired of myself, and then I’ll have no choice but to become the Me that this country wants me to be, with thoughts that aren’t mine and a voice I no longer recognize.

So I need to write to you, Emma, because I’m sure that as long as I keep doing so, I’ll remain the Me you know, and I’ll know I still exist because you can read me. And while someone reads me, and while someone cares, I won’t be able to die completely.

And perhaps, the more I write, the more I’ll remember that what matters is feeling everything—that feeling is precisely knowing that I’m alive; and that if I’m alive, then this feeling will pass, as everything in this life does, and my letters will become gentler, happier, and we’ll remember this only faintly, like the memory of a melody from a song we once heard many years ago, when we were just kids.