Category: letters

dear harrison,

the ac is out in the corolla and summer’s on her way to texas. lately it seems like a sick metaphor for my life. things dying. i find myself alternating between walking in grief or in fear. we try our best to hold on to everything that crosses our paths, but so much of life is having to let go of those same things. i know that on the other side of grief is acceptance or peace, but when you’re in it, it just feels like the world ending.

i listen to every sound the car makes now like stairs creaking in an old house. that’s what fear does. it makes you hyperaware of everything around you. you’re always waiting for the next big scary thing.

fear is a held breath.

i know that the world has ended for me on many nights and begun again in the morning. realistically i know that i’ll be okay. that no matter how i fall, i’ll still be staring up at the sky.

did you know that rock bottom has a basement?

time for me to crawl now.

all my love, suncica

Dear Babygirl,

I wish I could tell you that everything worked out the way you thought it would, but it didn’t. It worked out the way it was supposed to, like life always does. It takes a long time for you to learn that.

You work your ass off when it comes to your dreams. You persevere despite all of the odds stacked against you. You laugh. You cry. You love. Sometimes harder than you should. Love is never lost. It always comes back to you. Like energy recycled, and always bigger, brighter, and better than before.

People come, go, and some even stay. You spend a long time searching for some kind of reciprocation from people. Something more. But you find it in yourself. Your heart breaks. You actually break a few hearts yourself. You’re a rock for a lot of people. People don’t know how to handle the funny and strong girl going through a hard time. You become your own rock. More like a crystal. Shining through all of the cracks.

Are you ready for this one? Your mom is your best friend. Crazy, right? But she has always been the string that holds everything together. And when you’re thirteen, your mom gives birth to a healthy baby boy. And everything changes. Life can never be called dull again. Your heart expands and then there’s this boy who looks like you and your mom, and your dad all mixed together with long limbs and a loud voice and a personality of his own. He sighs and rolls his eyes when you tell him about life and all of your childhood photos look like his and you don’t really know where he ends and you begin.

You encounter many people who want to numb pain. So, they have sex with anyone, they get high, they get drunk, anything to not feel. But you feel your way through everything. Even when the pain is so great that it takes your breath away, you warrior your way through it. You spend so much time worrying and being scared and everything always comes out okay, you make sure of it.

You never let a man define who you are. You read thousands of books. You get lost in the words and found again. You place a lot of importance on being smart and not society’s version of what is beautiful. You come into your own. Your happy place is any ghost town or small city.

You learn that your voice and feelings are important and valid. And somewhere along the way, you fall in love with yourself.

I know you’re not going to believe me, but trust me.

I’m writing from the future.

We did okay, kid.

I love you the most.

–S.

Even though we didn’t make it, I still feel the same.

From 2014.

I know that we usually say I love you after we play-fight or someone brings up a topic that is still too fresh to joke about, but in every moment, serious or comical, I love you with my whole heart.

The beginning of this summer, at least for now, will be the last we will spend together.

As the days near your departure, I am full and I am hollow.

I am full of inside jokes, laughter, snippets in time, late night adventures, songs, embarrassing moments, proud moments, drives around the city, dances downtown, all-nighters pulled for assignments, the million little pieces that comprise our friendship.

I am hollow because I won’t be able to look at you across from the table at a restaurant and speak to you solely using eye contact. I am hollow because in your presence I am home. I have found shelter. I have found comfort. Life seems scarier to take on without you being a ten minute drive away.

Although we have only known each other for two years, I feel that our friendship has weathered the test of time in lives before and after this one.

I see us deep in the country at the age of five, collecting lightening bugs in mason jars and counting how long their light will last one Mississippi two. I see us at the age of eleven trying to drive an old beat-up truck and running it into a creek. I see us at the age of fifteen running away and deciding that we would live out of the bed of that same truck. I see us at the age of eighty-two at the nursing home ogling the ass of the tall, dark, and handsome nurse.

I am forever changed because of our time together. I hope in the future that we do get that apartment or house together that we always talked about, and even if fate wants us to always be separated by miles as our lives head in different directions, I want you to find comfort in the fact that I always carry your heart with me and when I feel the breeze against my face on a hot Texas day, or see the lights of the city late at night, I see two girls in a truck, laughing and speeding away.

I’ll be seeing you,

–S.

To C.

You are Drake’s Take Care album.

You are driving out to the airport in the middle of the night to look at the lights.

You are belting out old school songs.

You are random dinner dates.

You are genuine laughter.

You are that old thang.

You are the perfect verse over a tight beat.

You are knowing what is going on with me without seeing me for weeks.

I owe you all of the colors in their richest and brightest hues for your artwork.

–S.

When my brother turned 9.

2013.

I think even when you turn 36, or 82, or 117, I would still call you baby.

You were born the day before I started eighth grade.

I was worried about which of my best-friends were going to what high school, my whole life ruined and in shambles. How was I ever going to pick where to go?

Mom already told me that she wouldn’t fill out the transfer papers. Do you think I could have forged them?

And then there was you. Little, but big at the same time.

With a head full of brown hair. You peed on the nurse. That’s when I knew you were going to be trouble. You were so…so baby. And I was scared to hold you. What if I hurt you? Or if I didn’t hold you correctly? Or you started crying?

In time, you became my little, but big at the same time best friend.

I think the most important thing that I have learned from your nine years on this earth is just to breath. Life isn’t about marking up a calendar to next year and back of things that need to be done. Life isn’t about constantly making lists. Life is just about living.

Sometimes you take fifteen minutes to say something that could have been said in one sentence, and you remind me of our mother.

Sometimes you get frustrated really easily and shut down, and you remind me of our father.

Sometimes you nod your head to a song you don’t know the lyrics to and you close your eyes, and you remind me of myself.

I know that there will be a day when mom and dad won’t be on earth with us and it’ll just be the two of us. Life won’t always be fort building, ramen making at midnight with melted slices of cheese, waking up to Nerf guns, cannon balls in the pool, ice cold cokes on a summer day, Halo 4 campaigns before going to sleep, Teen Titans at 3 am, or scavenging the refrigerator for two items that are possibly edible together.

People move away. They have their own families. They stop talking. They start again. They love. They get hurt. They love again. They never stop loving. These are also parts of living.

These are things we don’t write on our list or our five-year plan.

I remember when we had to put Whoopie to sleep, I think that was your first real loss.

You lost your best friend. The dog that you’d known since birth. You were eight. For a long time we were worried because you were really sad, and you stopped telling jokes and laughing as often as you used to. Your spirit wasn’t as bright as it had always been.

And then we brought Ringo home a couple months ago, and you didn’t want to tell mom and dad, but you whispered in my ear that it made you sad although you really liked Ringo – he just wasn’t Whoopie.

My heart broke baby.

I want you to know that if I could somehow ensure that a part of you stays innocent forever, I would. That a part of you still cries when Sarah McLaughlin comes on and they show the commercial with the animals. If I could somehow make sure that your heart is always big and always full of love and that you never get tarnished, I would do that for you. Even if it meant sacrificing any amount of happiness of my own. I want you to never be afraid to be yourself. Even if kids laugh. I want you to wear clothes that don’t match, if you want to. I want you to do the robot to a song that the robot ‘shouldn’t’ be done to. I want you to mouth lyrics you don’t even know. I want you to still hug mom and dad and tell them that they are your best friends. I want you to keep laughing. Keep dancing. Keep dreaming. Keep loving. Keep smiling. Keep hoping. Keep wishing. Keep being goofy. Keep telling stories. Keep telling corny jokes. Keep living. It has been an honor to help raise you, to love you, and to take care of you.

I hope you always remember a time when we laughed and played together, and the world seemed a little simpler.

–S.

Dad’s Birthday Card via 2014.

You are peace of mind when I’ve watched a scary movie and can’t go to sleep.

You are words that I don’t want to hear, but need to listen to.

You are sweets after your daily nap.

You have always been very hard on me and with age I have realized it was all to make me better.

Thank you for all of the laughter over the years.

I hope with time I am able to continue to make you proud.

You are a strong man whose sacrifices for his family are endless.

I hope I learn to fear less one day. I hope my future husband can look at me with the same magnitude of love in your eyes when you look at mama.

I owe you all of the video cards in the world.

–S.

I Hope You Get My Letter.

An excerpt from a letter that I wrote years ago to my then best-friend who went into the Air Force.

First and foremost, I am a writer. I think that my best writing comes from the darkest of places, and sometimes I have dry periods where I am not motivated to write any words. It has taken me a long while to share anything because rarely do people care about one another on that deep of a level.

Sometimes you don’t even want to heart your own voice. Not because I have been depressed or anything. I’m okay. I’m good. You just get tired of it – as with all things. The day is July 8th and the time is 1:31 am. Like the summer nights that have come before this one – I can never go to sleep before three or four in the morning.

My apologies. I feel that we left things in such an awkward place that sometimes I think – will we ever come back from that? I know that you have bigger things going on in your life and it doesn’t really compare to what friendships are going to survive or not. That’s how we are, I know. You’re with me or you’re not. But I also know that sometimes we have to swallow our pride, a million times over, and just speak.

So, here I am.

I’d like to tell you about myself. If you ever start feeling like you’re in a prison – I hope these words help you find a way out in your mind. I hope you find it in your heart to smile while reading my words and maybe even laugh.

Lord knows we need all the laughter we can get,

but I’ll probably be doing a lot of crying.

–S.

If.

If you were here, I’d come pick you up at 1:30 am.

We would stop at McDonald’s and pick up all the food and drinks that are the worst.

I’d put on a playlist that I made that night. It would be filled with all of our favorite songs at the moment. Sometimes I would sing lead and you would sing back-up and then we would trade places.

I would look over at you and see that you are hanging halfway out of the window taking in the summer breeze that only happens at night. You’d be sipping your soda and a bug would hit your face while we are speeding down the highway to the airport. You’d erupt in a big cloud mixed with spitting and cuss words.

We are coming up to our destination. My secret place. One of the main reasons my car runs out of gas quickly.

The airport.

The lights. The breeze. The air. The sounds.

We take it all in.

The music is still playing, but we are no longer singing.

Here, conversation doesn’t have to take place. We are both sifting through our own demons. And this place calms us.

People are leaving. People are coming back. And although physically we are not on any of those planes – I see our souls rise up into the night sky and make things right.

We will always have these memories. And even when their warmth is no longer able to sustain our friendship – we know that those two young women are still alive somewhere in this universe.

A touch. A whisper. A scream. A cry. A moment. A feeling.

Fleeting.

In this moment, I am still aware that we are going to separate soon.

That you will move away and things won’t be the same. That someone else will get to hug you and see the way your face lights up for Pepsi and hot Cheetos – even though you know they make you break out. That someone else will learn all of your faces, different laughs, and words you’ve made up.

Someone else will be your friend. They will learn to love you. They will learn your ways.

-S.

You held me.

Years ago – in a letter to my dead grandmother – I wrote,

I disappear.

I disappeared.

I was disappearing.

And then he saw me.

You saw me anyway.

And in your own way – you were breathing life into me. Ultimately, in the end, I think breathing life into me, made you breath life out of yourself, and you had to let me go.

So, you let me go.

Usually when I think of the men in my past – I think of the pain that came from those unions, I think of them as having shined negative light on my life, dimming my own.

But you’re different. I remember the joy that came from our union. I think of the glow you brought into my life, a neon light at the end of the tunnel, a beacon in the night.

You held me.

I don’t mean with your physical touch.

I mean,

you

held

me.

Even when you let me go,

you

          held

                     me.

You were holding me.

You

are

holding

me.

Have you ever had someone touch you without touch?

Have you ever had someone caress you with their words?

Have you ever had someone hold you with their heart?

You were my friend before you ever became my lover.

 You held me.

You communicated openly. You let me see your heart.

You held me.

I never had to question where you were or who you were with. Trust came easy.

You held me.

You understood me, like we were speaking in a language from a life before this one. Maybe your melancholy heart just understood my melancholy heart.

You held me.

I could be naked with you.

You held me.

Your eyes catching and locking with mine across the bar through the smoke, sweat, body heat, and liquor smell.

I felt you before I saw you, too.

You held me.

Your desire for me was always reflected in your eyes. Your hunger exciting me.

You held me.

You made me breakfast every morning that we woke up together.

You held me.

You took the time to read my heart.

You held me.

Your laughter was the soundtrack of my life for months.

You held me.

You would stay up with me even when you had to be up early in the morning for work.

You held me.

You were my first kiss. The first time you kissed me – you drunkenly made me ramen noodles. taking care of me even at the beginning. I was nervous and word vomiting all over the place because I knew that you were going to kiss me with your whiskey mouth. You told me to shut up and you kissed me. Being with you, was like a ramen noodle and whiskey kiss. Not understanding why two things, two people, who shouldn’t work together – work together. Shutting up, so we could shut the whole world out together.

You held me.

That night, when the stars were big and bright in Texas (not like the song, but literally) you led me through the dark in the woods, using steps you had memorized to a clearing – showing me your place to get away from the loud of the world and into the silence. Woods surrounding us, crickets chirping, breeze blowing, you held me.

Someone can hold you without ever using their hands.

They can hold you with a look,

a laugh,

a whisper,

their heart,

their mind,

their soul.

I hope that you’re not having to breath life into anyone.

I hope no one is having to breath life into you.

It’s hard work, I know.

I hope you’re simply breathing easy and living easy – and still loving – oh so hard.

I hope you were held.

If not by me, then someone after me.

I hope you’re held now.

I hope you’re holding someone.

You are still holding me, not in a can’t get over you type of way – because I am over you, but the way you loved me, the way you held me, is STILL, to this day, tiding me over until someone else can hold me.

I hope someone, someday can hold a candle to you.

You held me.

–S.