Unsent Letters (/Unread Letters)

It seems to be a time of finding writing I never sent where I first intended it to go… old drafts, letters… myself in a time capsule.

I wish I had sent this letter. It was perfect, I can see now. Back then, I was too scared.

Looking back, I like who I was in that moment—tender, fair, honest, and deeply thoughtful. The point of that letter was to try to be honest about something that was very tricky, but very important.

I think I sent some less-honest, unhelpful, pointless and probably annoying letter instead. In fact, I sent enough annoying letters that I became self-defeating in the end, and the person who needed to read will never see it now. If she did, its meaning would be next to nothing today. That moment has passed. I failed to seize it.

Why? I’m not sure now. Likely, I was afraid for my tenderness to be rejected. Both of us were living through difficult changes.

Looking at my words this morning—listening to my 32-year-old self—I miss that smart and tender girl and so many of the people who moulded her and loved her then.

I am less tender in part for the loss of them. Some died, while others simply got fed up with me. (I got fed up with them, too.) One in particular had her hands tied. But I can’t help thinking now that it might have been different had I been brave at the right time.

Sadly, the insufferable, destructive politics of the last four years in this country have also left me less tender, more judgmental, and flat-out angrier. One reason I am so desperate for Trump and the Republicans to lose power is that I don't like what’s happened to my attitude, but I am so furious at their racist, misogynist, dishonest, myopic, sociopathic view of things and the real harm that their position does to people that I just can’t seem to shift myself. I know it has stopped me writing in a very real sense. That deep communion with myself has not seemed possible with this level of fury.

I truly feel I cannot live with this fury, and yet I cannot look away from what is happening.

So often these days if I look back to that period I do so and wish I had done things differently… not to change where I am now (apart from this anger), but perhaps to have retained more of that cast of characters in my life. I am probably as happy in my personal life as I have ever been—contented, truly—apart from our political situation here in America. None of what I think about is “instead of,” but rather “wouldn’t it be nice if so-and-so were still around sometimes.”