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3.18.2014

Emails Help Piece Together Our History

You could piece together some of my history with the emails and cards between my best friend and me... This would most definitely be true for the years she was living in Africa and I was here dating Matt, getting engaged, working a day job, and all that jazz. Our email correspondence was pretty epic. Seriously, it should be a book. It tells the story of our lives - including a lot of our real, honest feelings on what was going down and most of the details that we've each forgotten by now. I'm so thankful to have this trail of my life.

There was a time when getting cards in the mail wasn't such a big deal, but they still seemed worth saving. You know, thrown in a shoe box or a drawer of a bed side table. Something that you can find a few years later to remind you of a specific time in your life.

Now I feel like so much of it is buried in our inboxes, co-mingling with our Daily Deals and LinkedIn requests. I have a hotmail account that I check every few months... Buried in there is my history. If I were to go through it I can't imagine what I would find. I can't bear to ever actually close the account. But it could be lost so easily.

Should I go through and print them? Or visit every now and then? I may never do either, but it's comforting to know that I can if I want to. The string that means the most to me... the one between me and Britt... those are already printed and read. And maybe one day you'll read them too... Until then I'm thankful to have someone I can be honest with - who can talk me down, boost me up, and read my notes with the same voice that's in my head when I write them. Everyone should be so lucky.

This post was inspired by the novel The Divorce Papers by Susan Rieger. Young lawyer Sophie unwillingly takes her first divorce case with an entertaining and volatile client in this novel told mostly through letters and legal missives. Join From Left to Write on March 18 we discuss The Divorce Papers. As a member, I received a copy of the book for review purposes.

3 comments:

Alicia said...

I can understand completely. My sister and I email each other all throughout the day all day, every day at work. Just short quick messages but we are there for each other to share good moments as well as bad. We both delete them every day as they are on our work pc's but if anyone ever retrieves them some day and makes a book of them, they just might be best sellers!

Laura @ the gluten-free treadmill said...

I've been thinking about what my emailed correspondence says about me too - and what I save vs. What I delete! I think this is a project I'm going to tackle, if only to see what sort of legacy I'm leaving!

Windtraveler said...

...aaaaaand I love you. And I totally cherish our paper trail too. Because we both know that without it, I'd remember nothing ;) you're the bestest best friend EVER.