6:15 p.m. - 02/19/02
babblement of my favorite (and most incoherent) sort.
Dear Stephanie,
Hi. Listen, I just wanted to say thank you for how amazing you are. I know you're never going to read this letter, but that's ok because just joking with you and talking with you is so amazing that I think you understand how much you affect me. And if you don't - well...I will see you again. And I'll beat it into your head, in a very amusing, cuddly fashion, of course. I'll bounce you around the room or something. I'll talk. I actually speak with you. Do you realize that? Do you realize that when I am on the phone with you, my voice raises to a level so loud I have to lower it if I don't want my mom to hear? I think you're amazing. I think about you when I go on my walks through the woods. I think about the talks we had on our "loops" - I think about your minimal tolerance for cold, and your puffy red coat, and I think about the way you were basically always happy, and even the day the trade center was attacked, you just sort of shrugged and joked about how you weren't freaking out. You were just so steady and wonderful. You were the first person of redstaff that I got to know, and you were one of the last to hug me seeyou. I know we joked when Stacy got moved to first floor for that week about how I wouldn't have been so traumatized if it had been you who moved, but I think that had a lot to do with your reliability, how much I knew that you would always be back...and even though we said that you giving me so much shit and pushing me so hard meant that I wouldn't have missed you, I was lying. Because you were just amazing, you *are* just amazing, and when I talk to you on the phone, I feel several million times better. I feel like my heart is bubbling over - like someone is excited and happy for me, proud of me even...like someone knows me. I know you haven't been to this little nowhere, but you know me, and I think you understand how important it is to me to feel seen and understand and cared for.
I feel like you're family. You're so fabulously complex and simple. You joke and talk seriously and push and and brush things aside and are just genuinely you no matter what. I mean, I even got so upset with you that one day, I got so pissed with you, and later it was just like, "I was really mad at you" and you were like "yeah, you were" and I basically said "well, that was dumb" and it was over...because you knew it happens. You understood that I was angry about years of powerlessness, years of not being able to trust myself, and being expected to - years of being in pain and not being helped out of it until when the help finally came it felt intrusive. You understood.
And those things you said to me, about how maturity was all well and good but if it ever looked amusing to be sixteen I should go for it, and about how I came to RED and found myself, that you wouldn't forget me - and that I had changed the most of anyone you worked with...sometimes I wonder if I misheard, surely you didn't say anything as beautiful as all that to me, but then when I talk to you on the phone, when you greet me with, "mary! what a great surprise!" and I mumble about how I've been missing in action, you verbally wag your index finger at me and tell me not to lose touch because it does help, even on the days when I can't talk, you say - call. Because it's important not to lose that connection, and knowing that it is you saying this, you who are forced to be *part* of that connection, to be on the other end of that phone, telling me to keep calling, it makes me fuzzy inside. It makes my heart smile. Because it's not about keeping contact with the place, with the walls the trees and the floor- it's about keeping contact with the people who helped me metamorphosize. The people who didn't want to change me, they just wanted me to finally be free as who I truly am. And that's such a great gift and you were such a huge part of it, and I hate that I never said that, even though I know you must have known. I know you must have known what it was like to wake up every morning and see you there, without fail, whether you were sick or crabby or just silly. I know you know what it meant to joke with you about how I was going to begin using your odd logic for things and making your bizarre comments because that was the true recovery...It just fills me up to know that I have you in my life, that I got to meet you and know you, and now there's no reason that I can't keep in touch. Sometimes I get so scared that there will be a day when I can't call, when I can't touch back to that contact, but I don't see it on the horizon, and I hope I can keep that in mind. I hope I can keep you in my life.
Because you are so definitely in my heart, and I'm so grateful for you.
me
_
"The blue it speaks so full/ It's like the beauty one can barely stand/ Or too much things dropped in your hand/ And there's a green like the peace/ In your heart sometimes/ Printed underneath the sheets of ashy snow/ And there's a blue like where the urban angels go, very bright..."
-dar "mark rothko song"
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