Letter Three

Dear Keru,


I have talked to you since writing Letters One and Two, and it's good to know that the Internet easily bridges an 11,000 mile gap.

I officially dropped that ASL class at LFCC. It made me feel something of a liberated failure. An incredibly awkward feeling, to be sure.

I could never tell you where my problems came from. It would be easy to blame everything on my mother (though I'd wager 85% is legitimately her fault), but I know in a lot of cases, I've done it to myself.

I am a self fulfilling prophecy of self hatred. It's never a good place to be. I look back, and feel bad, because it never seemed like we talked about your problems. Yes, you would get frustrated with your parents. We'd sit in the church parking lot with our Wendy's and draw crabs on my windshield and rail at the world.

But I've never had a gauge on your feelings, save for that one day in the cemetery when we had that picnic. I mourn this fact, I mourn that I am a selfish creature, in need of constant attention and reassurances, that I could never be the friend you may have needed, if I'd only stopped whinging long enough to listen.

I can also rejoice, in that you're somewhere far, far away from your parents. Your mother will undoubtedly email you nonsensical things, but you now have a distance between you, an entire ocean or four that will give you the space to continue to thrive, beyond what you've done at L-burg.

You are wonderful, my dear sister. Wonderful in that you stood up for yourself, pressed for this trip despite your parents' obvious misgivings that one night I came over for dinner.

You are brave and courageous, with enough gumption (funny word :] ) to hop on a plane and fly straight out of your comfort zone and into full immersion in another culture with a semester or two of Mandarin under your belt.

I love you for it, my dearest Keru.

If my friendship with you has taught me nothing else, it's that love and personal connections can last through even the roughest of situations. The fact that you sign off with 'I love you' when we stop chatting makes me feel so damned happy. To know that no matter how long it's been, or how much distance separates us, you still care, and always make an effort to see how I'm doing, it truly means everything.


Well, that was a tl;dr of magical proportions.
In other news, UK is freaking adorable. I'm still hoping to keep him. It's far harder to ignore a kitten as opposed to guinea pigs. Here's to hoping that I will be a good mom to him, and that he doesn't get roughed up too much by Oreo and Cricket.

I believe you are right, he is decidedly British. His name will pop up out of the ether, and surprise us all. Although it appears that Neville has been decidedly vetoed. Someday, I'm getting a cat, and naming him that.


With love,
Roo