I came home the other night and opened my mailbox. There was a big envelope there, with my name written on it. No return address. But I recognized the handwriting immediately. From an old old flame of mine, a major old flame, who burned up my late 20s and early 30s. That makes him sound horrible and destructive. He wasn’t. The love going on there was \u2026 almost addictive. Or totally addictive. We were addicted to each other and the detox process took forever. There were moments of ESP and even a creepy Mr.-Rochester-calling-out-to-Jane-Eyre-across-the-space-time-continuum moment, when we were in different cities. It probably wasn’t healthy, but that was Love, I guess. When I moved to New York, he still lived in the Midwest, and we wrote each other letters. Long chatty letters. The “thing” between us was done but there was still so much we had to tell each other. Funny stories from the day, what we were working on, stuff like that. There was no email. Or, there was, but neither of us had it yet. Looking back, maybe we shouldn’t have been corresponding. It didn’t keep me hanging on or anything like that. There was nothing manipulative going on. It was just two people who got so much out of our interaction that we had to keep it going. Who will I talk to about the things I could only talk to about with him? And they were dumb things – like: “Holy shit, Leslie Van Houten is up for parole again, have you heard?” Or “I have got to tell you that I am now OBSESSED with early Bee Gees \u2026” You know. Stuff that only he or I would “get”, or that’s what it felt like. So the letters flew back and forth until, at one point, or at many points, I can’t really remember, we stopped. Time to move on. It took us forever to let go. The last time I had a letter from him was, 10 years ago, or something? <\/p>\n
I haven’t spoken to him since 2010 when we had a prickly interaction over text that derailed within 3 exchanges. I wasn’t doing well and he strolled into the middle of it, unknowingly. He forgot himself for a second, said something, didn’t respond to something I said, and white-hot-rage surged up in me, and I handed him his HAT. In no uncertain terms. He must have felt blindsided. We don’t always do our best in life. I mean, he and I are going on 20 years of knowing each other. Or, no, it’s been longer than that. Damn, I’m old. <\/p>\n
From the first moment we met<\/a>, there was a recognition thing going on. Like babies reaching out to each other from separate carts in the grocery store; “Oh. You. You’re like me.” That was what it was like, and that has not changed. <\/p>\n So I opened the mailbox and saw his handwriting. <\/p>\n Knew it instantly. After all these years. Instantly. Said to myself, even with no return address, “This is from him.” <\/p>\n It was a hand-written letter. It made me feel happy. He is doing well. He is happy I am doing well.<\/p>\n But what struck me was the handwriting. I know the handwriting of all of my friends in grade school and high school. To this day. I could pick my friend Jackie’s handwriting out of a lineup. My friend Kate. All of my siblings. Because I grew up in the day when you wrote letters to each other. When you got to know stuff like that. I joked with my friend Kate that I needed to lie on my side to read her writing, because it is so slanted. Getting letters has gone the way of many other precious things. I haven’t received a personal letter in years. <\/p>\n There is something precious and personal contained IN someone’s handwriting, regardless of the words that are written. It is someone’s essence, who they are, it emanates off the page in a way that can’t be translated via email. When I used to receive letters all the time, I didn’t experience it that way because letters were common. But now, looking at type all day long, communicating with my friends and family ONLY by email or text \u2026 I felt this rush of personal-ness, in reading his letter. It felt like he was right there in the room. <\/p>\n Getting that letter made me miss getting letters, and sent me on a little tailspin imagining the handwriting of my friend Kate, my friend Beth or Betsy, my siblings, my father. Each one \u2026 unique. THEM. <\/p>\n His handwriting is a fingerprint. It says: “Him. And him only.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I came home the other night and opened my mailbox. There was a big envelope there, with my name written on it. No return address. But I recognized the handwriting immediately. From an old old flame of mine, a major … Continue reading