Open Letter to Sara Bareilles Inspired by SOUNDS LIKE ME

Open Letter to Sara Bareilles.

Dear amazing super talented Sara.
I've read your letters to yourself in your book a few times already. I've heard them read by you, too.
I know that most likely you will never see this, but something in me is making me write it anyway, so here I go.

Those letters were (and are) exactly what I needed to read.
It is so funny how something that you so intimately wrote for yourself (yes, it feels that intimate even while being read from a book that got all the way to Argentina, and that's a huge merit on your part) can move people so deeply in the way your letters have moved me. It feels as if they had been written TO me. And if I feel that way, I'm sure tons of other people do too.

You are so right. I've felt invisible. I've felt ugly. I've felt like I couldn't stand myself anymore or like I had nothing to offer or like there's nothing I can give to this world or to anyone else that is worth anything. I did and I still do, sometimes.
Every single time you finish a letter saying "You are beautiful" it is like someone is trying to clean and disinfect a very deep wound I have somewhere inside of me. It's warm and necessary and so nice for someone to do it, but it also stings a bit and reminds me that the wound is still there. Open.

Some days I feel like I have explored and worked so hard. I've written poetry and songs and stories and music. I've studied and sang and performed, both home and abroad. I've read and investigated and I've put on shows. I've loved with my whole heart. I stood behind my love for someone, guarding it from my family and the whole world, because it wasn't "what it was supposed to be" (or whom I was supposed to love).

And yet, most days I stand in front of the mirror and feel ugly, and fat, and unlovable, and then I hate it all. My singing and my writing and my performing and my loving and my being a person in this world where it seems like all of that does not matter when you don't look like people expect you to.

But then, I find your book. And it reminds me that life can be fun, and interesting, and that we all feel like that sometimes. Even you, one of my most admired artists in the world, have felt and feels like that sometimes.
And there you are, reminding yourself of something that is so extremely obvious to me, but astonishingly you have to repeat it once and again so you can believe it. You are beautiful.
I'm learning and re learning, because usually once is not enough for us humans, that like you said, life is all about embracing the not-knowing, the going with your gut, the free non-stop falling.

I always thought I'd live here in Argentina, until suddenly I moved to NYC and ended up staying there for 3 years. I found a job, people I loved, freedom, and a home. I decided I wanted to stay. But Oh Well, life took me back to Argentina and here I am, trying to understand where I should be, or who I should be, and whether I should fight for certain things or just let them go.

I'm emotional as it gets, and the fall is faster than ever.
Thank you for holding my hand through it all. Your book was more than once the reminder I needed that life can be exciting, and fun, and that there's art and music and so many things we can find inside ourselves that make it all worthwhile.
And through your voice I can hear the words I haven't learned to say to myself yet, but they hold me through you, for now, until I do:
You are beautiful.

Thank you, Sara.

Julieta.