Dear Jared, or You’ve Got Mail

For years and years, what I did when I traveled was write letters to Jared. It became an ingrained habit. I didn’t have a journal; I had a Jared.

I never stopped writing to Jared when I was away, even long after we ceased dating. In fact, I wrote to him all the way through my time in the Peace Corps. I rarely emailed; I almost always wrote long hand. The letters were lengthy, occasionally tedious affairs, usually scrawled on the back of napkins or scratch paper or whatever was near me when the urge struck to say things. I’m not sure whether he liked these letters or hated them. I don’t actually even know if he read most of them. I’m not sure it mattered. What mattered to me was the act of sending them.

Since Jared died, traveling has not been the same. Several days after his death, I was offered an internship in Cambodia. I turned it down. At the time, I told people it was because I had also received an offer from the Prosecutor’s office, and because I just needed a break from traveling. Which was, in part, true. However, the more honest truth was that it somehow felt incredibly empty and sad to travel without him in the world, to experience things I couldn’t tell him about. And I think part of me was simply afraid I couldn’t do it. My letters to him were more than a resuscitation of facts and sights from the day; they were the way I processed and thought through things. Writing them was like lifting a burden from my own heart and mind. I was never so honest with another person as I was with Jare, and it was freeing. I wasn’t ready to not have that. I wasn’t ready to not have him.

I don’t know that I will ever be truly ready to not have Jared, to tell the truth. He died nearly two years ago, the Valentines Day of my 1L year. We had spoken on the phone just a day or two before, which somehow made his death ever more surreal. I remember thinking over and over again: But we JUST spoke. It didn’t seem possible that he was gone so suddenly. His absence hurts less now. The pain is not as sharp as it once was. But, I still feel the hole he left in the world. He was the kind of friend that cannot be duplicated; he simply knew me. And while I will never be able to have him confirm it, I suspect that I knew him too. The world felt safer when I knew he was in it.

One of the things I loved best about Jared was his ability to listen. I, more often than not, process by talking. A lot. Ad nauseum. Excessively. Most of what I say cannot possibly be interesting. But I need to say it. I need to talk through what I think before I come to a conclusion. I am a little crazy, and have to verbalize all of the nuttiness in my head, lest it accumulate and shove my brain out through my ears. I like to have those “how was your day” conversations that are not summed up with “Good.” I want to actually go through each thing that happened during the day. Jared had a way of listening that made me feel profoundly heard. We would occasionally emerge from conversation to find that the room had emptied hours ago and we were now sitting in the dark. When you were talking to him, it was like the rest of the world didn’t exist. You were the only thing that mattered. And it wasn’t just me. I think everyone who encountered him felt it. He was simply present in the wholest way possible, if that makes sense.

All of this is on my mind today because I am Some Place New. I’m currently in Seville, and am loving it immensely. Today, I was sitting by this old palace wall, thinking about how much I wish I could write to Jare and tell him about it. I wanted to describe the people I have met, and tell him how I have been trying to be Brave In New Ways, and talk about how unsure I feel about Opulent Churches. I wanted to take an hour and just put everything in my head down on paper, fold it up, put it in an envelope, and send it off to New York.

I’m not sure anything will ever really replace what I felt in writing to Jared. Which I suppose is just another way of saying that nothing will ever replace Jared. Which is okay. And good even. Nothing should replace him. It doesn’t mean that life does not keep moving, or that new relationships don’t happen, or that new habits don’t form. But it means that he left a mark. His presence mattered and it changed the world in a way that cannot simply be replaced or glossed over or forgotten. He marked my life, and I’m grateful for that.

I will always hope to be slightly more like Jare in many ways. I hope to listen with the kind of intensity and care with which he listened. I hope to be the kind of friend who makes people know that they are there, fully. Who makes people feel heard. Who is kind. Who stops everything for someone in need. Who is raw and honest in a way that lets others be raw and honest. I hope to be the kind of friend who helps carry burdens. And who is there to help hold someone else’s crazy, even if it is letter format from oceans away.