This story is true. Below you will find a letter I wrote to a man who I believe killed himself. The letter I wrote was returned to me in the mail.

I have letters I've written to people which never made it to them. There are many reasons my letters never made it to a person. I find these strange fragments of my life all over my current room. I am back in the place where I grew up, and all my stuff is in one room again. This is miraculous since i have lived all over including Cali, Tokyo, Arizona, Kansas.

The letter I have typed up was written in the Japanese year of Heisei 11, February 16, which is the year 1999. These are all my original drawings as well. I usually drew pictures in the letters i sent people. I used to be decent at writing in Japanese, now, not so much. I lived in Japan and also got a degree in Japanese Literature and Language.

I was 29 years old and found myself in a severe low point, back living with my parents after I had a severe dark period. I somehow became penfriends with a Japanese man named NAO. I think we met on some forum or something (this was way before Facebook). Anyway, I used to write a lot of letters to people. Writing was escape from my mind which was tortured a lot.

I wrote this letter to Nao, but it was returned to me in the mail. I knew i had his address correct, and I also knew that Nao was suicidal. We had been writing back and forth for several months before this letter was sent back. I tried to find out if he killed himself, and that was why my letter was returned to me. But I never found out the truth. I think his parents wrote something on the outside of the letter. Or maybe they thought i was crazy. My gut instinct told me that he killed himself.

Here's the letter I wrote to him which i found recently in my room:

Much of it is written in Japanese, and you can see the first page which is fully of drippy sentimentality:

Here's the part where it gets interesting, starting on the second page:

"We have a task before us which must be speedily performed.

We know that it will be ruinous to make delay. The most important crisis our our life calls, trumpet-tongued, for immediate energy and action. We glow, we are consumed with eagerness to commence the work, with the anticipation of whose glorious result our whole souls are on fire. It must, it shall be undertaken today, and yet we put it off until tomorrow; and why? There is no answer, except that we feel perverse, using the word with no comprehension of the principle. Tomorrow arrives, and with it a more important anxiety to do our duty, but with this very increase of anxiety arrives, also, a nameless, a positively fearful, because unfathomable, craving for delay.

This craving gathers strength as the moments fly.

The last hour for action is at hand. We tremble with the violence of the conflict within us, of the definite with the indefinite, of the substance with the shadow. But, if the contest have proceeded thus far, it is the shadow which prevails, we struggle in vain. The clock strikes, and is the knell of our welfare. At the same time, it is the chanticleer-note to the ghost that has so long overawed us. It flies, disappears, we are free. The old energy returns, We will labor now. ALAS, IT IS TOO LATE.!"

-Edgar Allan Poe, The Imp of the Perverse

Then my letter to NAO starts here:

This quote expresses perfectly, more perfectly than I could write, the present condition which I find myself in.

At last I feel that I have found words in Poe's stories which express sensations that I have felt, but have been unable to articulate. I'm reveling in his strange vocabulary, mixing wonderful words like divine, supreme, fantastic with words like terror, gloom, dizziness, so that the combination, ie, 'fantastic gloom', 'excessive terror', 'supreme despair', is like a long lost language that I found and understand intimately.

Because the despair, desperation, gloom and terror does have depth, an almost royal quality, as if it were surrounded by the finest jewels, I know sometimes I enjoy suffering in my life. Making things complicated, for some unknown reason, seems to be the path most likely to follow. Adoring from afar is pleasing, a bit painful, but in the end, most satisfying and never allows for me to become complacent, full.

My hunger grows daily, but the dull pains sometimes attack with such ferocity that I feel incapabable of even lifting a finger. Constant montoring has made it clear that I am a beast of two natures: impetuous and risk-taking and lifeless and dragged down by unknown terrorizing forces.

And unfortunately, the last few days have been lost, totally lost to the terrorizing forces that lurk beneath my placid exterior. Nightmares have attacked me in details that would make most people sick. The visual images pop up during the day, with such intensity that simply ignoring them is not an option.

Nightmares are the least of my problems, however, the mental apathy, the slow suckers of dull terror are the true enemies. Night visions uncover their terror blankets and hold my eyes wide open, hold me hostage to my peaceful sleep and force down a fear-laden drink, one that induces horror sights, grotesqueries of all imaginable shapes and sizes. They are shown to me over and over. There's no bed in which the visions find rest. They loom on the horizon of terror and spring up when their fancy strikes.

Finding this letter shows me that little has changed. I am still of two beasts. I still don't know which one will win.

Cheers,
Stellabelle

Founder of Slothicorn
"I belong to everyone and no one"