Lying in bed this morning, I was remembering our old high school group. In our sophomore year, we used to write lengthy letters to one another, priding ourselves on both our verbosity and our emotional forthrightness. It seems to me that the whole practice started off with the idea of writing "suicide" letters. It wasn't that we were suicidal - at least, I don't think any of us were. To a degree we were outcasts, misfits, who grouped together because we didn't really feel that we belonged in any of the cliques around us, but we weren't really depressed. Rather, in the morbid fascination that so often characterizes teenagers even as we rush through that stage of life in utter incomprehension of our mortality, we decided to make sure we expressed the things that we wouldn't want to leave unsaid in the event that we died. I think we had a sense that such expression was probably good for us emotionally. I remember writing letters that were pages and pages long, filled with all of the concerns and anxiety that consume a teenager's consciousness, and receiving the same in return from my friends. We were soon referring to ourselves as The Great Epic Writers. Most of us were in a fairly unstructured, experimental, somewhat self-directed educational program, which usually left us with time during the school day to talk about some of the things we'd expressed to one another.
(It occurs me that we owe a huge apology to Maris St. Cyr, Sr. Jean Furr, Sr. Margaret Mary, Mr. Sakowicz, and Diana Kidd, the teachers whose educational vision maybe shouldn't have been entrusted to a bunch of adolescents. I suppose this was basically a Montessori type program, or at least that it borrowed heavily from Montessori's concepts as they might apply at the high school level. I don't know how much longer after our graduation the Beta program lasted at Spalding, but I'm pretty sure I didn't end up being a very good steward of such a great experiment.)
I wonder if my life might have turned out differently if we'd still been engaged in that letter writing exercise the following calendar year when - unbeknownst to my friends and not fully understood by me - my young, dark life turned black, but I guess there's no point in going there.
Anyway, I think that part of the reason I enjoy dialoguing so much hearkens back to these angsty high school days, which trained me for a future I never knew was coming. It occurs to me now that writing those letters - sometimes a dozen or more pages long, pouring out our deepest fears and anxieties, joys and hopes - and then discussing them with one another, was exactly the model that Marriage Encounter uses to nurture the marital relationship on a daily basis. Of course, we don't now have the kind of time available to us that we did as teenagers to simply feel and think and express - the "carefree timelessness" that Matthew Kelly identifies as the key to making our relationships thrive. We have lives and responsibilities to attend to. But carving out some time each day with my bride of (almost) thirty years, to again express our dreams and our worries - and most of all our put them in the context of our love for one another - is probably more important than everything else that we do, and this experience among my friends in high school has prepared me to recognize this communication mode as familiar and comfortable.
These days I find my mind filled with so many things that I could use my old friends' compassion and reassurance about.
The thing is, I know that not even my dear old friends could convince me of what I cannot seem to believe for myself. I have plenty of affirmation in my life, from good friends old and new who have walked with me through the dark woods of my life, as well as from my loving wife and family. Why would more input, from my friends from high school or earlier in my adulthood, make any more of a difference for me? And so I believe that my current determination to reenter therapy is probably a far better course of action for me.
But I find I have something left that I'd want to say to my fellow Great Epic Writers: I'm sorry that I didn't make better use of the love and support you shared with me, to become someone whose actions are more deserving of respect than mine have been. Should any of you ever read these words, it will likely be without knowing the depths to which I sank, and though that has been so long ago now, I still feel as if I owed you something better, along with myself and everyone who loves me, really. I don't feel full of despair over it, but don't know that I will ever overcome my disappointment in myself if I haven't managed it over the last 15 years. I can't change my past, and strive daily to be a person who lives rightly and loves better than I managed in my worst moments. But you gave me better than I've ever managed to make of it.
Yet I'm determined to make the most of each day now, to be an instrument of healing and love and support for those around me and to continue to grow into the person I can yet become. And I pray the same for each of you. Will you pray for me, too?
