Epistolary

One of my very closest friends from childhood lives on the central coast in a town I've driven through at least 20 times. We met in nursery school (I can still picture her with braids and her blue plaid coat) and then went to school together from Kindergarten through the midway point of 11th grade when she dropped out, and I changed schools. Our parents were friends, in fact her family was the only one I remember coming over for dinner. I spent countless hours in the back of her stepdad's truck, hiding in piles of rope and staying clear of the giant chainsaw blades he used for his work as as tree trimmer. In 9th grade, she wrote me a note everyday and handed it off to me as we passed in the hall on our way to different classes. The notes were beautiful and colorful. She drew rainbows and outlined them in black maker. She called me beautiful and told me she loved me, again and again. We went to high school together and had crushes on the same boys. We smoked cigarettes together and we drank straight hard liquor out of water glasses together. We went to dead shows, we bought CDs, we drew in notebooks. She came to visit when I lived in Europe when things were just starting to fall apart for her. We wrote each other a lot of letters, most of which I still have.

Things went very sideways for her around 18. By the time she was diagnosed with a severe mental illness, she'd moved into a space of fearful delusion, intense and stultifying anti-psychotic medication, and moments of frightening anger. She was victimized by the criminal justice system in ways that make feel truly sick. Eventually, things got a little better. She lived in therapeutic communities and halfway houses, and I saw her every few years with her mom community events. Then her mom moved away, and I stopped seeing her at all. She would sometimes send me Christmas cards to my childhood home, which I had conveniently moved back into at 37. Once, I sent her a Christmas card in kind, but I didn't send the one with my family on it, my daughter looking like a cherub and my husband looking kind and loving, because that seems like a real fuck you thing to do to someone who had shared all of my youthful ambitions before brain chemistry stole them from her.

She sent a card this year, and I wrote her back a regular letter. The kind of letter you might send to someone you've known a long time but who you don't stay in touch with. It was just me saying hello to her, and wishing her a happy birthday and asking what she'd been reading. It was the first time in 25 years that I've just thought of her as a person in my life with whom I could communicate.

And today, I got a letter back from her and it was the kind of letter you might send someone you've known a long time but don't keep in touch with. She didn't asked me if I had a family or what I did or mention politics. She said she was proud of me for having a job and that she missed me and all the girls she grew up with. She said she saw her mom sometimes and that she was staying healthy. Probably, this kind of letter exchange is going to be the extent of our reconnection. And while it's limited and slow, it feels like gift someone sent a long time ago that got lost in the mail and that I'd never expected to receive.