When Did You Start Writing Letters?

I started writing letters in the fall of 2005.  I had always enjoyed mailing things but it didn't happen very often.  I don't ever recall having a pen pal.  


One of the earliest pieces of mail I remember specifically was a letter from my Uncle Keith. I don't remember writing to him, but I remember it having something to do with an elementary school project.  Uncle Keith was actively serving in Desert Storm and we were writing to the military.  I can see his return letter in my mind and I distinctly remember how terrible the spelling was even at age 11.  My Mom explained to me that Uncle Keith was good at a lot of things but handwriting and spelling were not on that list.  Building a military base for our soldiers in a foreign country using equipment 5 year old boys dream of is on that list.  Unfortunately, I have no idea where that letter is now.  But I remember what it looked like and I remember what a big deal it was.


Cut to 2005... I was unexpectedly single, in college, lonely and in a very bad place.  I had a lot of stuff to get out and no place to put it.  So I wrote.  And wrote and wrote and wrote to my beloved Auntie Pat.  I poured my heart and soul out to her.  She wrote back some times.  Most times she couldn't keep up.  She's busy and I write long letters.  But every time I put my pen to paper I knew she was listening to me.  I new she would open my tear-stained letter and she would read and empathize and hug me across the miles.  She read every word I wrote and wether she replied or not I knew I was really being heard.  


It made all the difference.


I would often write to her in class while ignoring a lecture or waiting for a professor.  Before long, my classmates wanted to know what I was doing.  They were all 5+ years younger than I was and fascinated by the concept of "snail mail".  Eventually I was writing to a rotation of family members and friends on notecards and I could knock out 3 or more before class even started.  Those being surface letters and a paragraph or two long.  I wrote to my grandmothers, my out-of-state cousins, and my classmates.


It was fun, but it was the letters to my Auntie Pat that got me through.  I write letters for a lot of reasons.  Mail is fun to send, fun to get, casual or intimate, happy or sad.


But I look back on those days and those letters to her and I think some days those letters saved my life.