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Letter to Franz Kafka

Dear Kafka, help me. I desperately and indefinitely need your ears because I lose my mind when I think too much. You wrote about how humanity's ruthless progress toward functionality shall be its downfall in Metamorphosis, didn’t you?

Dear Kafka, I feel so weak. I feel like a leech, mooching off of my family and having nothing to show for it. I feel like useless furniture that just exists. Who just exists with no contribution.

But dear Kafka, I don’t feel indulgent. I constantly apologize for existing the way I am, and still, I feel like I’m supposed to. Why is the world so cruel or why am I so cruel to myself? The construct of functionality and normalcy that is instilled and expected in one’s personhood is eating me alive.

Because when the demons come to eat me alive inside my mind, I don’t think of how I should take care of myself. I think of how disappointed I am in myself for letting those things get to me. And then, expectedly, I burst out, devour, and destroy. And as I crawl into my bed to rot, not even able to go to the bathroom to wash up, my body rotting like a corpse, I think of how empty and exhausted I am and yet, I feel everything.

At that moment, I think I am a disgrace, a nuisance, and a mistake. One who shouldn’t have been born. One who shouldn’t have existed at all. Dear Kafka, I think of how people view me, expecting something from me and frankly, I don’t want to let them down. And yet, I feel incapable. I think I am incapable.

Dear Kafka, I am sorry for disturbing your long-deserved rest, but I feel disturbed and empty in my loneliness. I expect society to be kind to me, and society expects me to give back. Therefore, I give less, and I receive less kindness. This makes me frustrated at myself and everyone and therefore, I take it out on everyone horribly and even more, to myself. 

But lastly, dear Kafka, if I wake up as a cockroach tomorrow, I wish to at least sleep, rather than think about going to work. I wish to at least find kindness for myself. Since my identity is my own society, I hope I give myself more kindness and I hope you do too. You deserve it more than anyone I know.


Rest well, respected sir.



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