I found this website called So There the other night while surfing. Here, letters are posted from people addressed to former boyfriends and girlfriends, secret crushes, and partners in adulterous affairs. It's along the lines of Post Secret, but with longer, more in-depth letters. I found this one that made me rather sad:
Dear Virginia Ray:
You have been my neighbor in San Francisco, since 1969. We have belonged to the same neighborhood association for the past 20 years. I have always looked forward to seeing your lively self, at our monthly meetings, in the Sunset Heights area.
You are three years shy of being 90, and, sadly, you have to go now, as the cancer has started getting really nasty. Still, at the hospital, you smile for the doctor, as you ask for a "morphine on the rocks, straight-up, ...to take the edge off:". You wouldn't whine, if your life depended on it..
I sure am gonna miss you, and I want to get down on paper, before "your next big adventure", a mini-version of your Life Story. I will look around, first, for how to do this, and what to ask...
See you later, today, and in "the Great Bye, and Bye".
Happy Trails.
Others are angry, maudlin letters full of "Why do I still love you?" and "Do you still think of me?" The webmasters of the site offer the space to give closure to people.
And I wondered, who would I send my "so there" letter to? I could think of a few situations on which I'd still like to throw out my unedited thoughts. But is it really closure? Is the just saying it enough? Or does it have to be heard - the old tree falling in the forest question.
Interestingly enough, this site, unlike Post Secret, isn't anonymous. People sign the letters and the signature is hotlinked to an email address. So in the end, it's not so much closure as fauxsure, a pretend way to say you're writing off your hurt or guilt or sadness signed with the hope that the addressee will respond.
I couldn't think of a letter that I would want to post to the whole world (that's what journals are for), but in the spirit of the site, I thought I would say, in brief: You know who you are. So there.
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Fauxsure
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3 cat calls:
it's definitely double-edged. i must compare to things i find out while on myspace- do i want to know/don't i... why the nagging obsessions. it's a long way to let all of it go.
A part of me thinks that this anonymous (or semi-anonymous) posting would be cathartic. But even as I thought about what I might compose to someone, I thought that I would probably never want a person to know that I was writing about him or her...and in the end, all that censorship would probably defeat the purpose. And really, you can't escape the time it takes to get over things.
That site has been around a long time. I bet if you REALLY wanted to look, you could find a fauxsure letter by me from back in my college days.....
PS and sorry to put this on your blog, Ash, I'm blocked out of my stupid blogger account right now because I blew out my modem during the storm and so can't use my own computer, can't remember my password and no longer have access to the email address I signed up with. I am working to resolve all of these issues now and hopefully will soon be happily blogging again. Until then, happy trails!
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