My Last Letter to the Boy

Dear Boy,

I was thinking back over my blog posts, because, you know, I'm starting a new blog for Europe and I don't really know if this is something I want to continue post-college, and if I do, it'll probably be much more intentional and focused, or something like that, and I was thinking about how I have all these little bits of writing that are Letters to A Boy. I've decided for sure that this is my last Letter to A Boy because I'm done doing passive things like this. I'm done being the kind of person who sits back and pines after someone but never does anything about it. I've seen the kind of person that makes me and I don't like it.

Listen, I want you in my life in some manner. I know we're in different places with all these different plans and I know where your passions lie and I can't pretend mine are in exactly the same place, but I also know that I really like the person you make me be. You've said things that still make me see the best in me and now, even when I feel really convicted by something you say, you still remind me of the person I'm meant to be, so it's still a good thing. I mean, I know it's never about me but sometimes I think that we're not in such different places after all.


Ugh, but I don't know because I never see you and I never get to talk to you and I would dearly love to talk to you and figure out what you're thinking not only because I get so much inspiration from your drive and your purpose and your clear calling but also because we're friends, you know, we've been friends in the past, and I'm a pack rat- I hate giving up anything that could even remotely still have some kind of value. And I think you're valuable. I think you're a worthy person and I'm tired of letting worthy people walk out of my life. You know, this entire month, this semester, all of my friends have been saying good-bye to things. I think that's why I might be ending my blog, so I can have some closure, some good-bye to something. But I'm not going anywhere next year- I'm still around and so good-byes don't seem appropriate. Though maybe I have been saying some and I just didn't realize it because I cried so much during Michael's last episode on The Office. I mean, really, if Jim is allowed to cry, I'm allowed to bawl. Anyway, off topic. My point was, I don't think I have to say my last good-bye to you yet, and I don't really want to.

Then again, maybe we're not friends. Maybe I'm just making that up. Friends tell each other things, right? Keep each other updated on their lives? Like, a friend of mine just told me that he and his wife are having a baby and I am so extraordinarily excited for them. My world just lit up from vicarious happiness, all from the good news of a friend. And friends tell each other bad news as well. Like, I've been telling all of my friends the story of my subletting woes, and even though things like this are exorbidantly trivial, my friends pretend to be interested and for this I am superbly grateful. Yeah, it's actually probably a smart decision on your part to not be friends with me, what with all the complaining and the whining and the inaction. Or maybe it's not, maybe I am actually a worthwhile person as well, I just haven't been acting like it recently. It's so hard to tell.

Sorry, sorry, all of these things are not to the point. You know, I don't really even know what the point is anymore. I can't say that I love you. What a funny phrase. I meant that kinda idiomatically, something along the lines of, "I can't say that I'd ever want a zombie unicorn, because they just seem to be an ineffective combination of two very different imaginary beings," as opposed to the literal meaning, that I can't physically say that I love you, which is also true. One of the things that I've learned about myself is that I find it difficult to verbally express affection. I will do your dishes because I love you, I will listen to you talk for hours because I love you, I will cease to judge all of the insane yet adorable things you do because I love you, but I will hardly ever use those three words. And I can't say that I love you, not only because love is a creepy obsessive kind of thing that's only healthy when both parties are in on the game, but also because maybe I don't. Maybe I don't and maybe I've been lying to myself for a long time to limit all of the negative potentials that are available to me in a world where I don't, in fact, love you.

So I don't love you but I kinda want you to be around in my future life (isn't Facebook a wonderfully convenient way to keep people in your life and yet at that great safe distance where you never actually have to care how they're doing?) because I respect you as a human being. Yup, this is a winner of a letter. But I think I wanted you to see how far I've come, even though, looking back, I think I envy the faith of the person that walked into an empty dorm room freshman year to nervously check her email more than the tired doubt of the exhausted soul that moved out of her apartment four years later. We learn so much, you know, we see so much. And I just wish I knew how to keep the practice and the promise and the hope of the person I used to be and put that into the person I am, 'cause I feel like she could use it. Do you have that problem? At all? I just, you know, I just think you're perfect. And I know that's not fair, but, hey, maybe it's just the boost you needed, maybe you needed to hear that today. Goodness, I hope you never need to hear that, but, for my sake, I hope that you did.

OK, two more things, even though I know you stopped reading like three paragraphs ago. One, I really want you to listen to The Avett Brothers because I feel like your life would be a better place because of them because, even though there's no name dropping with Jesus or God or anything, there's this wonderful beauty in the things they say, and I think you can find God there too. And two, poetry, because I hear English majors like that kind of thing and also because I'm trying to turn into a person with a soul and I hear poetry is helpful with that (even though I stole this from my best friend's wall, no lie):

In men whom men condemn as ill
I find so much of goodness still,
In men whom men pronounce divine
I find so much of sin and blot,
I do not dare to draw a line
Between the two, where God has not.

-Joaquin Miller

So there, that's the best I have to offer, a recommendation to people braver than me and words that were written by someone more inspired than me. No, I know it's not. I know I have such wonderful potential, like we all do. It's hard to feel it sometimes, you know?

Especially after you've written a letter to the love of your life telling him that you don't love him.

It's just that I'm going away for two months without any hope of seeing you and I had to say something because part of me is crazy and that part of me thinks with a nameless hope that our future will be gloriously different from what we make of it. Whatever we make of it.

Anyway.

Much love,
Addie Jo

Hammocks and Porches

I want a hammock. It's going on my list of things that must be in my home, along with a wooden porch and potentially fireplaces.

I was going to wrap all of this up in symbolism and be vaguely mysterious yet angsty about all of this, but I'm lazy, so I'll just tell you that the hammock is a symbol of freedom and awesomeness for me. A person with a hammock plans on having enough free time to enjoy it, time spent reading or napping or listening to music or pondering the existential questions of life for all I care, but time that is not scheduled, time that is not intended for any specific purpose. And I want that in my life. So I will have a hammock.

I will have a wooden porch because I am tired of living in institutionalized places. I am tired of concrete and cookie cutter rooms with taupe walls and beige carpet, with no history beyond that moment when someone decided they could make a killing off of another mid-class apartment complex. I want a porch that I can sit on and watch lives walk by, a porch that I can shoot the breeze on, a porch that I can keep a close eye on whatever children may also be occupying the house as they play various games of sundry origins in my attempt to stop their brains from rotting. A porch gives a house the kind of character I want my house to have. I have no desire to live in a place that has no need of a porch.

I would love to live in a house that has enjoyed life long enough to have had previous need of fireplaces. I feel like these could come in handy in case of an apocalypse of some kind, but I also like the aesthetic appeal of a fireplace in a room. I'm not sold on it, though. I like modern conveniences, probably more than I should, and modern conveniences were more than likely gerry-rigged into a house with a fireplace and so maybe it's more trouble than it's worth. Who knows. I'm not going to buy a house for the fireplaces, but they could play a deciding factor.

I like thinking about what my future home will be like, because I get to choose. That is possibly the one positive about this whole growing up and having to be a real person thing. As deathly afraid of having to make these choices as I am, with all the responsibilities that come with them, there is this wonderful freedom in knowing that I get to make these choices. This is my life now. Holy goodness.

See, and that's what I've missed for so long, that sense of the wonderful adventure that you can make your existence. I grew up, so long ago, idealizing these heroes and heroines in books that dreamed of doing something more, being something bigger, traveling to somewhere, anywhere that wasn't the place they already knew. I loved them for this spirit they all shared that sent them places to do things. Maybe they didn't all go seeking adventure, but they all at least did something when adventure happened in their lives.
Somewhere along the way, I let that leave. I let that burning desire to go do something behind. I don't know that it's a bad thing- remember that Sam loved the Shire and came back to it at the end of it all. I started being happy where I was, which is something that people in books who go do things don't really seem to grasp, being happy where you are. But there's always the danger of forgetting that push to be more when you're happy where you are. Life loses some of its magic and you have to replace that somehow, otherwise you're stuck waiting for things to happen to you and wondering why everything feels so mundane.

I am so excited to be doing something new, to be free of previous obligations and moving on to things that are almost incomprehensibly exciting. I'm backpacking through Europe. What? What? How wonderfully unexpected my life turned out to be. As a friend of mine said, When did I become the kind of person that lives my dreams instead of just dreaming them? (I mean, I know precisely when- when a generous donor decided that money that could be spent feeding the hungry would actually be of better use to us poor privileged college students who want to travel the world, see new things and inspire a sense of great potential in other people; it's not like I made this happen on my own. [end reality-induced aside]) And even though my plans for the fall and the following year are still in the safe-zone of Chapel Hill, I'm not confining my possibilities for life after that. Like I've been.

If there is one thing that four years of perspective has taught me, it's that you never need to limit your possibilities. When something comes your way, by all means, take it. And if you have found that thing, that idea, organization or community that embodies everything you're passionate about in life, pursue it and don't let it leave you. But by all means, don't leave the world behind. There's so much potential in our lives.

I'd hate to see it flounder in a place without hammocks and porches.