Mail Call

     Yesterday I fished through a drawer in my writing cave and found an old spiral bound notebook. As I turned away with it in my hand, a piece of paper fluttered out of it. It was a letter written in 1989 by an old friend, a guy we'll call Max. He and I had been school friends, but lost touch for a while. We reconnected a couple years later through a mutual friend. From 1979 to 1990, Max and I exchanged letters frequently. Long, journal-like missives that contained mostly the mundane doings of our daily lives. Sometimes we waxed philosophical, discussing serious things as we stumbled together through our twenties and early thirties, miles apart yet connected firmly by pen, paper and postage. We knew each other's biggest dreams and deepest secrets. 

     He stopped writing regularly after he got married. The last letter, in 1992, was short and to the point. I missed Max for a while. Then I hated his wife. Eventually I hated him. Now I just don't give a damn anymore. 

    Life's too short to waste any of it thinking about people who don't think about me. 

     I opened the single sheet of typing paper that was folded in half and beginning to yellow. I skimmed over it just to see when it was written, but didn't read every word. I laid it on the desk and just stared at it for a while, not sure what to do with it. For years I kept all his letters stuffed into a shoebox, finally burning them to ashes in my driveway sometime in the mid-90's. This was the last remaining letter. The last piece of proof that at one point in our lives we had been friends. 

     With a small nostalgic hitch in my heart, I tore it into a dozen pieces and dropped it in my little wicker waste basket. 

     This evening, I walked to the mailbox and pulled out a stack of sales flyers, credit card applications and yet another plea to renew my AARP membership. Flipping through the stack as I walked back to the house, I noticed the corner of a pretty red envelope peeking out. 

     A letter. From one of my newest friends, a kindred spirit. She's on the other side of an ocean, but also connected by pen and paper, postage and...internet.  I can't wait to pull out my dusty box of stationery and write her back. 

     It's been such a long time. 

Just Another Random Thursday Morning

     Some days you just wake up in the sunlight of a personal epiphany. 

     The past several months have been transitional for me emotionally. Oh, I'm sitting in the same house, with the same man...but I'm not the same person anymore. Walking out of the fog of so much loss all at once, and the burdens of all the responsibilities that go with that, is not simple. So much, too much, upheaval. The struggle to write something good and meaningful while all that is going on is practically impossible. It was for me, anyway. The writer's pen became too heavy to pick up. So I left it there, abandoned on the desk, dust motes in a sunbeam waiting to settle, and walked out of the room...

     ....and time passed...years most truly wasted and lost forever....

     With the support and encouragement of friends, the pen isn't quite so cumbersome anymore. There is new ink on fresh white paper, and that, my friends, is pretty damned exciting. 

     But life's inevitable obstacles are daunting...and potentially debilitating.  So I worry...'How are we going to pay for that...where can I find time for this..' 

Lately, those obstacles have begun to stack up. Insurmountable. My personal Everest.  Even though there's a good man in my life who works his ass off in a dirty job every day, I feel like I'm climbing those peaks alone. 

I've come to understand that I've felt that way My. Entire. Life. 

     All 50-something years of it. 

     Alone. 

     I have always been the misunderstood "odd man out", left to my own devices, forced to look inward for emotional support...and I've been mostly okay with that. Admittedly, I'm comfortable keeping most people at arms length...

     But, I've begun to feel more and more like something is missing. I'm craving something I couldn't quite name. Some elusive ghost of emotion. 

     This morning, the simple, and really so-obvious-I-can't-believe-I-didn't-hear-them-before words came to me... 

     I've never felt cared for. 

     I've never had someone else step up and say, "Give that problem to me. I'll do it." 

     My mom always used to complain to me that she just wanted somebody else to step in and deal with all life's crap for her. She was tired of being the one everyone else came to when they had a problem. (Of course she never realized she'd been using me as her personal psychotherapist, unburdening herself to me, since I was about five. :/ )

     I'm not sure why I'm following in her footsteps, but it pisses me off! I'm not sure how to solve it, but I'm also not really seeking to, at the moment. 

Life will be what it will be, and right now I'm just happy to be heard. 

     My dream is to take all this crazy, emotional baggage and infuse it into fictional characters that readers will relate to and maybe like enough to ask for more. 

     My hope is to grow old writing. To die with a pen in my hand and an unfinished sentence on the page. 

     I'm not sure if any of this made any sense, but thanks for listening. :)

Time for more coffee, I think. 

-kim