I used to write letters, I used to sign my name

I remember when I was a kid, when something bothered me, when someone bothered me, I would write to them.  At first I'd actually send them the letters.  This was back before email, before blogs, when the only thing you could do quickly and easily is take out a piece of paper and write it out.  And I would.

I would tell people what I thought and then hand it to them.  I was never a good speaker, so when I had something to say, it was just a whole lot easier to hand them a piece of paper with my true feelings on it, and the point would get across a lot better than if I'd spoken it.

The thing about letters, hand-written letters, is that they convey so much more than just words.  Think about it for a second. When you type something, a letter, a blog, a report, the words may say a whole lot, but the letters themselves, not so much.  Each letter is uniform, and you can bold them, italicize them, change fonts, etc, but there isn't a whole lot of leeway. There is only so much you can do.

But when you write something with your hand, you can make your words bigger, smaller, messier, neater, violently underlined several times, when you *really* want to get your point across, all of which conveys more meaning than a stroke of a key in our modern, sterile communications these days.

Something happened to me in high school where I lost my nerve when it came to these letters, these pieces of literary and visual artistry. And, while I never stopped writing to people, I never actually sent the letters.  They'd accumulate in notebooks, spiral bound and out of reach from the people who needed to see them.  What would end up coming out and actually getting to their hands (if anything) was stripped of my heart, and about as sterile as the words I'm typing now.

But it was worse, because I was doing it to myself.  It wasn't a lack of resources, it was a lack of courage.  A couple of bad receptions -- no mention of my efforts to get my point across, or even open hostility to my message from the recipient -- caused me to stop giving out my letters.  Caused me to stop telling people things they needed to hear.  Caused me to stop dead in my tracks and pull it all inside, like a secret diary, bound up and internalized.  I used to be bold, and now I'm afraid.

People still don't even know about my blog here.  And it's not even all that personal.  I'm still scared they're going to be bored or just not care.  So you can imagine my trepidation when it comes to giving unsolicited feedback or advice.  I have something to say to someone, so do I just say it?  Do I write it?  Do I wait for an opportune time, like Croxley's after a couple drinks (liquid courage and retcon all in one, so I'll say what I need to say, and then hope they forget....)

I am currently thinking of something specific that I want to say, to someone who may or may not accept what I have to say, and whose opinion has come to mean way more than it should.  What I want to say is not even a bad thing.  I think they made a good decision, one which I could have made in the past and didn't.  It all relates to my anger with God over my mother and all that mess.  I'm not getting into that.  But I made a bad decision, one that caused me a lot of pain, and one which I wanted to tell another person in a similar situation not to make. I didn't -- I ended up chickening out -- but they decided to make a good decision anyway.  The decision I wish I'd made.

Now I want to say something to affirm that, but I don't know if I should or not.  This would not have been an option in my youth.  I would have said something.  It wold have been on college ruled paper, written in blue Bic ink, and it would have come from my heart.  The part of me that was bold enough to then fold up the letter, put their name on it and hand it over.

Why am I so afraid?  After all, it's only words.