voices
Voice #1:
Thank you for the sympathy card and letter. I don’t have time to respond right now, but know that I appreciated it.
Voice #2:
Thank you for the sympathy card and letter. What you wrote was very meaningful to me. We haven’t been in touch in a long time, so it would have been easy for you to ignore the fact that my father died. But I appreciate that you took the time to write from the heart. Thank you.
Voice #3:
It was really nice to get your letter. Even though things have been rough on and off between us for so many years, I always know that when it matters, you will come out of the woodwork and say the words I need to hear.
One time, long ago, you told me you weren’t really a writer, but that’s crazy. What you wrote was comforting and disturbing and ugly and beautiful at the same time. You were brave to write it.
Voice #4:
Nobody sends cards with actual letters in them anymore except my 86-year-old aunt and random elderly friends of my dead parents, so it was so nice to get yours.
Nice? Shit, I've been living in the middle of nowhere, a place where people are polite and distant, for way too many years. What I mean to say is that what you wrote blew my fucking mind.
I miss being around people who get what it's like to die and come back from the dead, you know? People here, where I live now, don't get it, or at least, they don't talk about it.
I know you claim not to be a writer, but what you wrote was poignant and real and raw and beautiful and ugly and shameful and lustful and full of wonder. Only those of us who have come out and lost our parents and lived without some of the things we wanted or needed could manage to write something like that.
I was just telling my students today that if everything a person writes is tentative and full of worry over what other people will think, then what's the point? But, I said, if writing that way is terrible, then living that way is even worse.
One of my students walked out crying. She probably won't be back, or else she'll show up next week in office and pretend nothing happened and claim she was sick, or else this will be the opening, the moment when she begins to tell her story, and years later she'll write me a long letter like the one I got a few weeks back that will go like this:
You almost killed me, but luckily, you also saved my life.
Maybe being a teacher or a friend is as risky as being a doctor. But the reality is that none of us are ready for that kind of truth. Still, some of us manage to go on living honestly because we are fierce and, maybe, a little crazy to believe we can change anything, ever. And yet we do—we change our own lives and others’ lives and sometimes a little piece of the world.
I want to be one of those somebodies.
I do love you, you know, even though I also hate you a lot of the time, even though I could never be in a room with you for longer than a few hours without wanting to kick the living shit out of you. But that's at least partly because I was trying so hard not to be like you that I forgot how important it is to be real.
Thank you for sticking all of it out--you know, all these years we've known each other--and for writing what you wrote, and for being who you are.
Thank you for the sympathy card and letter. I don’t have time to respond right now, but know that I appreciated it.
Voice #2:
Thank you for the sympathy card and letter. What you wrote was very meaningful to me. We haven’t been in touch in a long time, so it would have been easy for you to ignore the fact that my father died. But I appreciate that you took the time to write from the heart. Thank you.
Voice #3:
It was really nice to get your letter. Even though things have been rough on and off between us for so many years, I always know that when it matters, you will come out of the woodwork and say the words I need to hear.
One time, long ago, you told me you weren’t really a writer, but that’s crazy. What you wrote was comforting and disturbing and ugly and beautiful at the same time. You were brave to write it.
Voice #4:
Nobody sends cards with actual letters in them anymore except my 86-year-old aunt and random elderly friends of my dead parents, so it was so nice to get yours.
Nice? Shit, I've been living in the middle of nowhere, a place where people are polite and distant, for way too many years. What I mean to say is that what you wrote blew my fucking mind.
I miss being around people who get what it's like to die and come back from the dead, you know? People here, where I live now, don't get it, or at least, they don't talk about it.
I know you claim not to be a writer, but what you wrote was poignant and real and raw and beautiful and ugly and shameful and lustful and full of wonder. Only those of us who have come out and lost our parents and lived without some of the things we wanted or needed could manage to write something like that.
I was just telling my students today that if everything a person writes is tentative and full of worry over what other people will think, then what's the point? But, I said, if writing that way is terrible, then living that way is even worse.
One of my students walked out crying. She probably won't be back, or else she'll show up next week in office and pretend nothing happened and claim she was sick, or else this will be the opening, the moment when she begins to tell her story, and years later she'll write me a long letter like the one I got a few weeks back that will go like this:
You almost killed me, but luckily, you also saved my life.
Maybe being a teacher or a friend is as risky as being a doctor. But the reality is that none of us are ready for that kind of truth. Still, some of us manage to go on living honestly because we are fierce and, maybe, a little crazy to believe we can change anything, ever. And yet we do—we change our own lives and others’ lives and sometimes a little piece of the world.
I want to be one of those somebodies.
I do love you, you know, even though I also hate you a lot of the time, even though I could never be in a room with you for longer than a few hours without wanting to kick the living shit out of you. But that's at least partly because I was trying so hard not to be like you that I forgot how important it is to be real.
Thank you for sticking all of it out--you know, all these years we've known each other--and for writing what you wrote, and for being who you are.
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