They Remember Who I Am Even When I Forget
The first two letters I received back came from two women I met in college nearly 30 years ago.
What makes me marvel isn't that they responded.
It's how they responded.
Three decades of moves, careers, relationships, heartaches, victories, detours, and entirely different lives. And yet, when their letters arrived, it felt as if no time had passed at all.
There wasn't much small talk.
No lengthy weather reports.
No careful skimming across the surface.
Instead, they were real. Honest. Vulnerable.
They trusted me with pieces of their lives.
Still.
After all this time.
As I sat with their words, I found myself thinking less about the letters and more about friendship itself.
There have been seasons when I disappeared for a while.
And yet the remarkable thing is my friends kept showing up anyway.
They didn't keep score.
They didn't hold my absence against me.
They remembered who I was underneath all the noise.
More importantly, they remember who I am even when I forget.
