Kindred Spirits

My friend Lauren and I decided that we wanted to take time and be creative aka "Creative Time". Today was the beginning of our plan to meet weekly and allow ourselves to take time and enjoy something we both love.
Lauren is the visual artist and I'm using words as my form of art. Today we decided to base our work off of something I had found on the internet. Bird Island Beach

Near Sunset Beach, North Carolina

On an uninhabited beach in North Carolina's Brunswick Islands—a 30-minute walk from civilization—is the little black mailbox that could. In 1981, when land-development proposals surfaced, a local resident planted the mailbox, with a notebook and pencils inside, in this unlikely spot as a plea to help save the 1,300-acre barrier island. And it worked. Old-fashioned handwritten letters helped secure Bird Island's state reserve status. Even after the island was saved, though, the letters of fond memories kept showing up. Then came a pair of reading glasses. Then a steady stream of wishes, dreams, words of encouragement, and tales of love and love lost arrived from visiting tourists who, still today, sit on the adjacent bench to bare their soul at the Kindred Spirit Mailbox.

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- Here is what came of it...hours of working and talking lead us to create our own story about "Kindred Spirits" 

The Kindred Spirits 

     They say that at times when your heart breaks, it shatters into a million tiny pieces, like sand. Other people say that it cracks and you can fill the crevice with other people or other things. I think I believe in both. I think that some heartbreaks are easy to fix. They take weeks or months of a somewhat conscious effort to move on from. But these other heartbreaks, these heartbreaks where you’re left with a pile of your former self and beliefs, these heartbreaks you carry with you forever. They leave you a totally different person. And that is how I’ve found myself here, at this mailbox. 

     It stands alone with only a bench to keep it company. It’s crammed full of letters that will never reach their destinations. Letters written full of love, sorrow, hope, or regret. Many may contain all of these things. I place my letter in among the others, wedged between a pair of reading glasses left years before. The light blue envelope will fade away with time, eventually my name, Kate may fade away from the letter as well.  My letter contains the only remaining pieces of my former self. After I leave this beach I feel that I’ll have nothing to base my decisions off of. Nothing but the heartbreak that I will never completely walk away from. I’ve experienced the heartbreak that takes an effort to overcome. This however, takes an effort to just move. 

     I stare at the beaten mailbox, which reads “Kindred Spirit” and I almost laugh at how accurately it describes me. Unfortunately, the new me is anything but fresh and rejuvenated. This new me is just like the mailbox. It is worn out and jaded from all it has had to weather. It is full of secrets, hopes, aspirations, and loss. It is full of life and its lessons. I wonder if any of these letters have ever been read. If there lessons will ever be shared. I know that what I’ve written is something more honest than any words I’ve ever spoken. I want to read all these letters. I want to learn from them and let their words fall onto the sand and drift into the ocean, dispersing and mixing into an honest mess of good intentions. Instead, I reach for one. I pick a letter that’s corner is bent and has small and meticulous writing on the front.

 February 18th, 2011. 

One day you are going to fall in love again, like before. I picture this being the reason that I confess to everything. I imagine that seeing you two together will one day be too much. Maybe the heartache will be the driving force that causes me to reveal myself. Maybe my heart won’t be able to take it and I’ll be forced to be brave. One day it may just carry too much weight and cause me put it all in the open. Or one day you may see me wince when you all touch and you may question me later. You’ll assume all the wrong things until you come to the conclusion that speaks the truth of all my love.  On the other hand, maybe I’ll find someone like you. Someone that could never measure up but someone that allows me to forget about you for a few short moments everyday. Moments when I can breathe in the air without feeling you. When I can close my eyes without seeing you. When I can think without you crossing my mind. Perhaps, I’ll be lucky enough for you to be the jealous one. I may get to see you break for a moment, though I’d never want you to be hurting, it may be the only way that any of this will emerge. I may see you glare at my admirer or turn away too abruptly at our embrace. This would give me the opportunity to question you, to hope that my observations prove your love.  And then we could be together. But until then I wait, and I hope. All I do is hope. I hope for the one day that we will be together. That the world will make perfect and complete sense. I’ve heard that ‘time will tell’ but so far time hasn’t told me anything I want to hear. It’s just been telling me that you’re always just out of reach. I don’t want to listen to it anymore. I’ll just keep my hope and ignore time. - Forever yours, David - 

     I feel the remaining pieces of my heart break all over again. Tears fill my eyes and I want desperately to believe that David still has hope. A hope that I just tucked away in a mailbox. A hope that I’ve finally released. His story is so similar to mine, yet we may be completely different. I feel connected to his heartache now. I’ve placed my story in a mailbox, assuming it will never get read. And I’m taking a new story with me. One equally tragic, but one that has a fight behind it. One that desperately won’t let go. I fold up the letter and put it back in its bent envelope and return it to the mailbox. But I know that I’ll never forget it. I know that the person who wrote this letter was forever changed by love. A love just out of reach.