Dear Esther

To: Isolation

To: esther_cunningham@gmail.com

[Sent: 7:27 PM 2018 June 18]

To Self-Inflicted Isolation,

It's odd, writing to a concept rather than a person, but Shelly thought it may help me with some self-reflection before I make this "journey of self-discovery" as she so fondly puts it. I have a few people I want to write letters, but I also think it's important to address some of the more pivotal aspects of my childhood. The ones that hide between the lines of my development into who I am now. The ones that I never took notice of, but instead took for granted until they no longer existed except in memory.

Isolation, you were my first friend.

I say this because as I grew up, I didn't have many friends, and you were the one constant in my formative years. I don't mean to say that the isolation was entirely terrible—in fact, my independence as a child helped me know myself better, in some respects.

But, as a child, we all need someone to turn to—a confidant of sorts, for us to confide or secrets in. This happened to be, for me, the neighbor's barn cat.

I would wander away from home more often than not, in my spare time, tracking lines in the dirt with found objects—mostly pipes and long branches ripped from the homes they had of the trees. Without so much as a thought, I made my first home out of the neighbor's barn, tracking in dirt and mud on rain boots I splashed through on the dimmest days.

I came across Tom the cat—I wasn't particularly imaginative as a child—on the last day of the first week I spent in the barn, away from the prying eyes of Catherine and the knowing and sympathetic gaze of her new beau Jake. Isolation, you were broken then, but did not disappear with the presence of another life, but instead amplified.

Tom couldn't respond to me regardless of how much I wanted companionship in the form of understanding and empathy, and instead I spent the next few weeks chattering to this barn cat I had begun to call a friend.

And then suddenly, he disappeared.

I suppose they all do, in time.

•••

You became my friend in the way that you never left, regardless of who I surrounded myself with.

In the fourth grade, I recall, I finally met and tried—emphasis on this particular word, for later reflection—to befriend another girl in my grade who I thought would understand me in the way I wanted. She was bright and friendly and was the epitome of adoration itself.

Her name was Julia, and I thought the world of her, at the time.

But isolation, with your claws like ice, dug into that ray of sunshine I had become to call home, slicing through that bit of happiness I had finally received. Instead of thinking of myself as a part of something larger, I thought of our friendship in terms of myself versus the world. You told me, whenever I was lowest, that I was no longer fit to be a friend.

What a lie that was.

I didn't realize how toxic our relationship—you and I, isolation—had become until it was too late.

And she was gone.

Catherine told me not long after that I didn't need friends, not if I wanted to follow the right path—the only path in her eyes.