When coming across it my interest was piqued for I understood at once why someone would create such a repository of essentially dead almost letters. All who write regularly have mental letters that we have half drafted over the years. In little mental cardboard boxes there are notes of concern, compassion, love and remorse. At the time of creation we worked through each phrase and each modifier. With passion we sought the right adjective or adverb. Internally and quite fiercely we debated whether an ellipsis would convey the uncertainty we sensed at that time and in that space.
Ultimately everyone has put a partially thought out, maybe even tangibly writ but incompletely drafted missive aside. On the edge of our mental work table what we had struggled with became lost out of time. Circumstances change. In changed times posting the note would have been awkward, ill advised, hurtful or just puzzling. As time and fortune played out sometimes we realized that our mindset was wrong. In other personal timelines we came to know that we should have sent the note. Two hands holding open a carefully selected card and painstakingly unfolding the paper within would have led to a moment of discernment. Were the words within chosen artfully quite possibly the unwritten post have changed a relationship forever.
But the crux of the matter is this we didn't finish the draft. This inside the deeper recesses of our soul we have feelings that the mere existence of those unspoken words cause that we wish we could assuage.
Whoever it was that created such a website was a genus. In aligning that HTML formatting they gave a space for people to post, electronically as opposed to with a “Forever” stamp, words that still have weight in their heart, words that really matter to their souls. Collecting, capturing and posting perhaps offers a catharsis or a sense of absolution. Maybe it just allows a being to examine his or her motives and to reaffirm or disavow the constructs that had led to that point in time, that emotional state, that heartache, that anger or that passion.
In a closet in my house there exist two boxes of memories from the years 1972-1983. There are poems I wrote, bad, really bad free verse that in my best hand I printed out in tiny script on 6 inch by 18 inch pieces of this cardboard. My writing stock was comprised of the dividers that separated stacks of ice cream sugar cones in a case. I worked at a boardwalk soft serve ice cream store and we burned through comes fast. So those dividers were stacked up to be trashed but I made use of them. I filled them with the doodling of a teenage mind. And in the mid afternoon of a sunny summer’s day when everyone was on the beach they were not moving up to boardwalk, not even to get a pop. The beach vendors had what they needed. Me I had time to draft those thoughts. Every emotion that roiled me was captured but they never went anywhere except into my box.
In those boxes along with those bad, bad poems are the talismans of a young male living in the wild open years of the 1970s. In addition to poems those cardboard sheets contain drafts of letters written but never sent. Letters explaining why the break up was because of me and not you. Letters written saying I could change and would she would take me back. Letters railing about politics and letters just filled with babble drafted on a night spent too long consorting with John Barleycorn and his friends of the field. The reality of what is in those boxes isn't important anymore.
What is important are the bits and pieces in my head. Every now and then I dip my toe into the waters of religion and philosophy. And the two are like oil and water they do not mix. But when I have talked to people, people I love and care about I have oft times felt that I should be saying what I feel in a more precise way. There is a nagging in my soul that says speak of the turmoil, speak of the disquiet, speak of the moments of living in just the now with acceptance.
Have I drafted any of those letters posted them? No. There is a fear that the meaning would be misconstrued. There is a fear that people would see me for the shallow madman (L)oser that I am. In a way this writing prompt I currently am working with is my version of Letters Unsent. I try and put out what I think on any given day. I try to be rigorously honest in what I say because I am saying what is inside of me. In these words I am working out what should have been said and sent and which wasn’t.
Rash notes posted in urgency are most often unwise. Unfiltered and lacking reflection so much damage can be done to so many people with such a post. But too long a delay and the words not spoken can become a cancer on our soul. On a clear day, under blues sky the words need to find their way out. There shall be no more letters unwritten, maybe letters a little more carefully crafted over time, but not unwritten.
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