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Originally written in Simplified Chinese. Translated by 0x00A0.

I met Slowly on a very ordinary afternoon when I was feeling a little down in the dumps about my friendships. The first thing I did every day when I got home was to limit myself on the screen and not to communicate with anyone. Even on the screen I didn’t have anyone to pour out to, and I didn’t want to bother my friends with my sadness. I didn’t have the guts to go to a psychotherapist, and that’s how I was feeling down. In my sad state, I came across a blogger who recommended Slowly.

At first glance, I was intrigued by Slowly’s old-fashioned style of communication, so I downloaded it right away.

After entering Slowly, I filled out my personal information with excitement, but I soon felt lost. After months of social isolation, I didn’t even have the courage to send out the very first letter of my life. The text I typed out was deleted and deleted again, and I tried to think of ways to make my letter look more friendly and polite. After typing the letter word for word, I read it myself and realised that the statements were so bad that I even had the urge to uninstall the app. Fortunately, I got the courage to send that poorly written letter with the idea that I had downloaded this.

When I got back to Slowly the next day, I found that my letter had been replied to! I was so excited that I bounced off the couch with my phone and screamed around the living room for a while, knowing that this was the first time in my life that I had ever received a reply! I replied to that letter from Vietnam quite seriously and she replied to me very quickly, and we stayed up late that night waiting for the letter and replying to each other. So after that day, I was no longer afraid to send letters to other people. I would edit each letter and let it sail across the ocean with my anticipation towards an end that I couldn’t reach. The first thing I did when I woke up in the morning was check my inbox and reply to my lovely pen pals. They told me about their lives, their customs and their traditional festivals that I had never tried before. We talked about each other’s dreams – something I had never even talked about with other people in the real world and in those social apps of rapid communication. One day I went online and found that a friend had starred me, and it was such a lovely surprise! It really helped me to regain my confidence and passion for socialising, thanks to my lovely pen pals. Later on, I began to enjoy checking out the stories posted by other people on Slowly, which told me interesting and touching stories. They let me know that there are so many other people in the world who share the same problems as I do. It was so inspiring to see that there are so many ways to fight against negativity, and I also slowly began to enjoy collecting those exquisite stamps on Slowly. I would print them out and put them in my photo album.

But then I took a little break from Slowly for a while because of the busy school year. I often missed it in my free time! So I decided to give it another go after five months. When I went online, I found that many of my former pen pals hadn’t been online for several months. I started to reply to my hoarded letters little by little. I was really surprised when I realised that one of my pen pals, who hadn’t been online for three months, had already read my letter! I was absolutely thrilled. I remember writing two pages of my diary that night about it. Thank you to my lovely pen pal Annamey and everyone else who wrote to me for it!

I’ve changed so much in the six months since I started using Slowly! It’s been one of the big reasons I’ve regained my confidence. I’m so much more open to socialising now. I don’t hide away in my room with my phone anymore. I’m happy to have conversations with my family and friends. And most importantly, Slowly has made me realise what a beautiful world there is out there! There are so many lovely people out there waiting to be discovered! I’m working hard to prepare for my IELTS exam and apply for a visa. I’ll be visiting all of my lovely pen pals one by one, I promise! And to the brilliant developers, thank you so much for this amazing software and for creating Slowly to show me a brand new world.

And to the rest of my friends I’ve never met or written to, allow me to share with you a verse of my favourite poem:
“If by life you were deceived,
Don’t be dismal, don’t be wild!
In the day of grief, be mild:
Merry days will come, believe.
Heart is living in tomorrow;
Present is dejected here:
In a moment, passes sorrow;
That which passes will be dear.
–“Если жизни тебя обманет”, by Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin.