Holiday Mail

Just taking a quick break from holiday mail here.  Work has been very on and off lately... and right now it is a "off," but since it can turn on in little less than a moment's notice, I am trying to take advantage of the time and pulling some holiday packages together and starting the Christmas cards.  Most folks get one of my hokey Christmas letters, but I still try to write a little something in each card. 

I just wrote up a card that was one of my moral dilemmas this year.  I questioned whether to even send a card, but ultimately I thought best to take the high road and harness some of that holiday spirit.  So here's the story/ramble:

This was one of the my first friends (no surprise a female, as the large majority of my friends tend to be!) I made here in Arizona while attending grad school.  We would get together regularly (movies, dinner, etc) and even play tennis w/ each other... check in on each other's pets if we were out of town.  Fast-forward, a year or two after graduation and this would be the very first person I came out to.  While I knew she was religious, obviously I felt comfortable enough to think she would be okay with it.  Well, you probably know where this is going... long story short, I was met with much disappointment and words that I was making a mistake and that I would be going to hell (well, maybe not exactly that - but pretty much inferred).  So needless to say, I read that very wrong!  We still socialized and she even met Todd... but things were never quite the same.

Fast forward a couple more years, and I had a message on my cell phone (that I rarely used) that said she was moving and asked if I still had the extra set of house keys.  Again, since I never checked my cell phone by the time I got it, she had already moved and oddly enough, no forwarding telephone number.  I sent a Christmas card to that old address later that year figuring it would get forwarded - but never received anything back, either a reply or a "return to sender."

So fast forward to last year, and very late in the holiday season I get a Christmas card from her... saying that she was thinking of me and hoping that all was well... and she was still living in the Phoenix (I had kind of thought maybe she decided to go abroad on a mission or something).  I chose not to reply last year and I was a bit miffed about how things were left and the years that had gone by without any sort of closure... and Todd will tell you everytime we drove by her old neighborhood I kind of wondered what happened. 

So anyhow, I saved her card with her new address... and when I was flipping through my address book and got to her name, I decided to dig it out and send her a card this year.  I have no idea where it'll go... or if it'll go anything beyond this annual check-in.. and I if I want it to go anything beyond that, but I figured life is too short to hold grudges or be petty... and while I'll admit there is still some of that lingering, I figured this was sort of a way to start letting it go.

Comments

[monette]

gosh, just thank you for writing that. I find myself acting petty toward feelings I had in school or earlier in life, and it's so true that it's not worth it to hold a grudge! Obviously, our personal experiences would be different, leading to different results (and I do hope everything works out well for you!) but sometimes it's nice to see someone expressing this same sentiment out loud that I've been rolling in my head for bit. I definitely need the reminder to just "let it go" once in awhile. :D

[Gail]

I applaud your decision. She made the first tentative move to get in touch again. Maybe she's had a change of heart, but you would never know if you ignored the gesture. You can't make new "old friends" or something like that, I've been told. I wish some of my feuding friends would follow your lead.

[Gail]

I applaud your decision. She made the first tentative move to get in touch again. Maybe she's had a change of heart, but you would never know if you ignored the gesture. You can't make new "old friends" or something like that, I've been told. I wish some of my feuding friends would follow your lead.