Read Part I
If I lived with regrets (which I try not to do because they just waste time), I would have a serious one with regard to some letters.
My boyfriend the last year of high school was J, who was going to college about 10,000 miles away at the time (at least it seemed that far). He was an excellent letter writer. We exchanged at least one letter a week, if not more, from the time we first became friends until we broke up right after my graduation.
Those letters were filled with news of our days, thoughts and opinions, hopes for the future, and expressions of our feelings. And J was not only good at writing letters, but he could pick out the perfect greeting card as well. I always kept his letters and cards in a special place, so I could take them out and read them whenever I was lonely for him and my heart needed lifting.
But when we broke up - actually, when he broke up with me so he could be with someone else - those letters became a reminder of the pain. For almost a year I grieved the loss of his love, reading his letters over and over. One day I realized that I was never going to get over it unless I stopped reading the letters. I tried to hide them in an inconvenient place, but kept going back to them. So finally I threw them out. It was the only way. And it worked. But those letters are gone forever.
The only thing I have left from J is a beautiful Easter card with a poem on it about living life one day at a time, and the passage he wrote in my junior yearbook in which he first declared his love for me. Oh, and I also have his friendship.
You see, by finding a way to get over our breakup, I was able to re-open the door to a friendship that lasts today. J and his lovely wife K (also an old friend who is, thankfully, not the girl he left me for) live with their daughters about a three hour drive from here. We don't get to see each other often, but when we do the love of friendship is still there. The pain is gone.
