Words from the Past

*If you're reading this on a phone, click on the pictures to see them clearly, they look blurry otherwise.

Today was such an unexpectedly emotional day. I was thinking about the piles of letters from camp and my friends in high school that are just all lumped together in a box. I decided I wanted to organize them, and put them into plastic ziplock bags chronicled by year so they’re a little more organized. I should know by now that when I go digging in the past I’m bound to be swept up by emotion, and in the past this day might have wrecked me, but it didn’t today. My main form of expression has always been words, so being consumed in everyone’s words today was like a literal journey back into all these different years of my life, and I was able to heal in some ways through them.

Last year in 2016 was the year that I really discovered just how important my relationships and friendships are essential to my happiness. My theme word was “connection,” and in the beginning it felt awkward for me to reach out to people I haven’t spoken to in years, or months, and I had that ego-protection of not wanting to be rejected. The more and more I did it, the more I realized that not one person I reached out to was upset or annoyed that it had been so long; they were just happy to talk to me. Every person wants connection. Everyone is happy to be thought of by someone else, and to be reached out to. Even though I have a new “theme” in 2017, I’m continuing my connection efforts, because ultimately that’s the most important aspect of my life. I have much less hesitation to reach out to people this year, because I’ve worked through a lot of that fear of rejection. My part is to reach out and make contact; I have no control over the other person’s reaction, and I try really hard not to take their reaction personally, whether it’s positive or negative, although I have yet to get a negative reaction. I digress. Back to the letters.

In the first stack of letters, I found e-mails from my dad to me at camp in 2002. I was not expecting this at all--usually my mom wrote letters, and signed them from both her and my dad, so I had forgotten about these. The first one made me sob like crazy, and the second one made me laugh, and so I continued on through the four that I found, plus the Valentine’s Day card he wrote me when I was 11. I don’t have a lot of written material from my dad, in fact, these mementos might be the only ones I have. I haven’t watched family videos in years, and so this was the first time I was hearing his “voice” in a long time. I felt transported right back to 2002, when he was renovating my room to make it more appropriate for his “frosh” who was starting high school. His letters made me laugh, and cry, and I was grateful I came across them.

He and I are both a fan of "precise" times, so I chuckled at his exact 5:10 comment

Valentine's card from my dad 

In another stack, I found letters from my oldest camp friend, Dave, who I actually just e-mailed a few days ago to check in on. He wrote me a letter every year from 2003-2008, and we’ve managed to stay in somewhat contact since 1998, even though that was the last time we saw each other in person. WOW, I can’t believe next year it will have been 20 years since we’ve seen each other. I’m hopeful that one day we will reunite in person. Something has kept us connected all these years, and I just know there’s a purpose in all of this.

Our "marriage certificate" from the Sadie Hawkins dance 

In another stack, I found letters from my SJ friend Sarah in 2003 when we had a major falling out. They were absolutely heartbreaking to read, and I wish I could’ve gone back and slapped myself, and told myself to fix it with her. We did manage over the years after that to have a friendship, but it was never as close as it used to be, and things between us were never the same. It got to the point where I just didn’t want to stir up the pot, and it had been so long, that I never reached out to really fix our relationship, it just remained comfortably surface-level. We saw each other at a reunion last year in June, and we connected over texts a few months ago, so the foundation of rekindling our friendship was starting to materialize, but I just had to text her and apologize today after reading those letters. It was a compulsion that I just needed to do. I apologized for being an asshole, and a horrible friend, and that she was so right about the way I handled situations. Some of things that she said about me about how I deal with things I only started working on LAST YEAR as an adult, 13 years after she called them out. She responded with maturity and grace, and we made a mutual decision that we want to start a new, adult friendship with each other. Coincidentally, I reached out to her on a day that she’s going through an incredibly difficult time. There’s no accidents, the universe is definitely at work here.

It’s so important to me that I heal and strengthen my relationships with people, whether they’re here or have crossed over into what’s beyond this life. This is it. This is the only reason we’re here: to love each other and be connected.

I challenge anyone reading this to reach out to one person in the next week. Whatever the reaction is, don’t take it personally, and then reach out to the next. And the next. We always wait and think it’s someone else’s responsibility to connect to us, but it’s not. Make the move, and keep making it.

With love,

Cara