Echo: letters for the things you cannot say yet

A sample letter, written this week to show the work.

Dear G.,

There's a sentence you said to me thirteen years ago that I could still quote back word for word. You won't remember saying it. The things that save people rarely feel big to the person holding them.

I was nineteen and about to quit. You didn't talk me out of it. You asked what the quitting was protecting, then you waited. Long enough that I had to answer. Nobody had ever waited before. I answered, and the answer was bad, and you didn't flinch, and somehow that made it fixable.

I kept going. Not because of one speech. Because of that silence you were willing to sit in with me. Ever since, I've been trying to be someone who sits in it for other people.

Here's the part I should have said at the time, and maybe once or twice since, and didn't: you changed the shape of my life from the side of it. You weren't the main character in that year. You were the door.

Thank you, G. The nineteen-year-old you waited for turned out okay.