The Art of Letter Writing

I miss writing letters.

In elementary school, I participated in a letter-writing exchange with a student in Europe. I can't remember the first country... maybe Spain? 

I also had a pen pal in France. That came a bit later, when I took French classes in junior high and again in high school. 

Of course, letter-writing was big in school. We didn't have cell phones yet, so passing notes was one of the quickest, most efficient ways to communicate when you're supposed to be quiet (and paying attention) in class. 

We also had "Slam books," which were spiralbound notebooks where each person in a group could write notes in it for a day, then pass it on to the next person. By the end of the notebook, you had quite the tome of juicy gossip. Typically the subject matters focused on teachers and classes and students that sucked. Or when someone said something funny or mean. Occasionally, there might be something "anonymous" about that person's crush.

Of course, since the notebook was shared among a certain friend group... we could all decipher the handwriting. Only a few of us were really good at changing up our handwriting just enough that it couldn't be easily identified in passing.

Writing letters really became my strength in high school and my early college days. 

(Yes, college!)

I wrote to my best friend. I wrote to my new "potlucked" (aka randomly assigned) college roommate, S. 

And, of course, I wrote to a boy.

There's something so intimate about letters-- especially handwritten ones. Letters allow you to get to know someone in a way that no other medium can. It allows you to be known, intimately, in a way you can't (easily) otherwise convey. 

I would like to think that I want to go back to writing letters, but in practice? I'm flaky and forgetful. I want to do it, but I don't prioritize it. And, so, it doesn't get done.

But I still use letter writing in very productive ways, even if I rarely share the result.

I've written letters to former friends.

I've written a long, bitterly angry letter to my dad (and promptly burned it).

I've written letters to lovers-- past, present, and future.

And, most recently, I wrote a letter as a lead-in to proposing to my now fiancée. 

I have often said that I express myself better in writing than I do out loud. 

I don't know that that's necessarily true anymore, but I stand by the idea that writing letters is a sacred practice.

And it's one that I definitely want to do more of, in the near future.*

*Note: I'm ending this blog post here, but I have a lot more to say about writing letters. Including that time period of my life where I wrote to prisoners (yes, really... did I mention I was just a tad naive in my earlier years?), that time when I wrote letters to a boy and I ended up falling in love with him through our letter writing, and then he broke my heart by writing me a Dear Jane letter... Oh, and, I also tried to use a letter to get out of my first marriage. I have used the art of writing letters in numerous ways over the years, and perhaps this should really be a series of blog posts, rather than a high-level-skimming one-off. What do you think?