A Letter from Ten Years Ago

About ten years ago, when I was 18 years old, I had a web page. This was a little bit bigger of a deal back then than it is now, but anyway, on my webpage, I had a bunch of personal writings, and an online version of this zine that I was doing called Alphabet Soup. Also included on the site was the address of my parents, who I lived with at the time. So one day, a letter came, and it was addressed to me, but for the return address on the envelope, it also just had my address.



There was no postage on the envelope, and it somehow made it to my house, and despite postage due written on the envelope, I dont recall paying any postage. The postmark on the back of the envelope revealed that the letter had been sent from St. Louis.



My dad had checked the mail that day, and he had the letter for me. He said that a weird letter had come for me, and that whoever had sent it did a risky thing by not including postage and by including our address as both the intended address as well as the return address. With great interest, I read this letter, written two days after my 19th birthday:



Needless to say, I was very shocked to receive such a heavy letter. I tried many times to go to the Telnet address she had written, but she must have written it wrong, because it always just came up as an error. I remember feeling really bad that I could not talk to her about these problems. Dear Katie. If you are out there, if you are still alive, I hope you are ok. I hope that you found away out of this abusive relationship with a man who has no respect for you. Im sorry that I was not able to contact you. I tried, I really did. It has been ten years since you wrote this, but I still feel a sense of horror and guilt and heaviness when I think about what happened to you. Sometimes when we want to be loved, we want to be loved so much that we accept so much less than we actually deserve. Katie, please, know that you are not wrong, and that while these experiences will probably shape you for the rest of your life, that you did nothing to deserve what happened to you. I hope that you found someone who you could talk to about these problems, and that you were able to find the perspective you needed to get yourself out of this hateful cycle. Thank you for thinking that I would listen. I did and I did. I prayed a lot for you, although I can only hope that my concern made a difference in some way. Can ten years erase what has happened to you? The scars of your experience will likely remain as long as you live, but I hope that you know that you deserve only the sweetest and best that love in life has to offer.

Dear Lord, please see to it that this woman is held with love all her days on this earth, and that her soul is relieved of this weight in the eternities.

Predatory, manipulative men of the world, your self-hate will kill you just as it has killed the freedom of those you have hurt. You have created slaves of insecurity, and deep confusion and hurt will accompany them and all those who walk with them in life.