L is for Long Time Ago

Almost two years ago I wrote a letter to my sister that I just couldn't send. I was doing a lot of that at the time. Writing and filing away letters. It was before my blog, before anything, and it was my coping method. It worked to calm me down, I guess, but it didn't really do much more. It didn't help me do anything BUT calm down. This blog has done a lot more for me, getting comments, and also responses privately, that have given me great advice.

I have a lot of those old letters sitting around. Not long after I wrote those, I discovered Accentuate Writers Forum ( <3 ) and through that, Unsent Letters. You'll see the link to it sitting over in my blogroll. I don't know if you've checked it out, but you should. It's a whole collection of exactly what my coping method was. Letters that weren't sent.

I submitted a letter that I had written to Amanda, but I changed the names. I never heard back about my submission, and assumed it was rejected. I know Unsent Letters as a whole, had been put on the back burner for a while, because the woman who runs it had bitten off more than she could chew with it. She also runs the writers forum, and Twin Trinity Media which was putting out a few other books, and a few blogs of her own, and has a family and has numerous health issues, and I think I'm forgetting a few hundred other things she does. How she manages to do even half of that, I don't know. So Unsent Letters got put on the back of the pile, and I knew that, but I thought my story had been read before that.

I just received an email a few days ago from them saying what amounted to "do you still want us to consider this letter, after it's been so long?" and I didn't know what to say. In the past, I think I actually casually mentioned that I didn't want my letter read, if it hadn't been already. I had said that because I couldn't remember what I had written. I knew vaguely what it was about, but I have at least 6 letters to Amanda written in that same approximate time frame, all holding different details. Which was the one that I had sent in? Was it one that someone outside the family, who didn't know any of it would understand? Was it one someone could relate to?

So when I got that email, it was like little gift. Apparently my "please disregard" was forgotten and I had a new shot at reading it. I opened it, scared. And I read it. And I started crying, because even thought I remember writing it (or ones like it), I had forgotten how much I felt at the time.

I told her that I would love to have my letter considered still. It's exactly what it needs to be. If it's not accepted, I'm alright with that. But I'm also really glad I wrote it, that the letter was saved and set aside. It's a very important letter to me, reminding me of where I was two years ago.

I regret changing the names to fake ones. I used "Amy" and "Laura" instead of "Amanda" and "Lauren". The names are close, but they just.... I dunno. I want the letter to have our names on it. I didn't even sign my name. I just signed it "E."

The letter sis more than just remind me of what I felt, but it made me more aware of who and where I am now, and how little has changed, even though it feels like so much has. My worries haven't changed much. My feelings about the situations even less. But then, some things have changed. I'm not so spineless and I'm a lot more independant. I think I've grown up a lot since I wrote that letter (which is funny, because at the time, I felt like I was more-or-less done growing up. I didn't realize I was so naive until I read that letter. And I'm sure two years from now I'll have this realization again, and yet I still feel so much LESS naive than some of the people I see walking around. It's strange to me, how I have always felt so much more aware of things than other people, and yet never aware enough.)

Write. Every day. and save it. Because someday, a few years from now, it'll really make a point to you. And I think this will happen to me for the rest of my life.