July 19, 2014

Dear —,

How are you? I’m doing fine myself, sorry that I didn’t reply to your last letter. I was in one of my darker moods and didn’t feel like talking about this whole ordeal, which sometimes depresses me awfully. But, my lawyer has been visiting me fairly regularly recently. I’m glad that it seems like things finally started to get moving. Life plays jokes on all of us. I worked up my courage after 20 years to go out there and see the world and then I got locked up in jail for it. Sometimes it hurts so much thinking about it. I have to shut it out of my mind to live through the day. But don’t worry, I ain’t thinking about killing myself. I thought about it a lot a year and a half ago, when I worked for the sake of getting money. Life seems so pointless to me then. But now, after my short-lived journey I realize that death is so terribly final while life is full of possibilities. I can’t wait to get outta here. I talked a lot about it with —-, about the places we can go, the people we can meet, the helps we can give, the changes we can make. Although I may get deported, and with that in my record, I’ll probably never be able to go another country for the rest of life, and Chinese passport is about useful as toilet papers in the first place. But it ain’t gonna change a thing, I know that all I wanna do is to go places and help people and China is a big place, and it got lots of people. I guess I am a communist. They teach us in school that the reason why so many problems exist in our society is because we still are in the early stage of communism, but maybe we’ll never reach the final stage, maybe true communism itself, like Utopia, is an impossibility. Anyway, bear with me, I know I talk a lot of nonsense. I hope to hear from you soon. Take care!

A Catcher in the Rye,

G. V.