Love Letter

I wrote this silly, sappy thing. 

Care.

Care hugely and deeply and largely and until it hurts. Care until you talk and research and rant. Write pages of blog posts and 140 characters of dissent. Protest and change things, because when you care enough, why the hell wouldn’t you want to change things? The world is entrenched and stuck and evangelizes apathy, but fuck shit up anyways. Demand things change, demand more. Expect more.

Care for one another, in the way that means memories so strong they ache and photos with worn corners. Make cross-country phone calls and send silly pictures across email. Make ridiculous faces and make a point to say good morning. Care for one another and for the Other you don’t know, because cars and feelings can’t always weather the things in their paths.

Care with letters and words and kindness and the one time you took the trash out, even though it was their turn. Do it five times.

Do it with gusto. Do it because you’re lucky enough to have interlocking bodies, and it would be a shame not to interlock them. You don’t have to love them all–that’s a myth–but I hope you love someone and someone loves  you. And more than that, I hope that at least once, those two things line up in a perfect way that sounds like music and looks like rainbows.

Care for the jagged ones, the ones that can’t tell you why they hurt, but do, the ones that owe you an apology, and the ones that refuse yours. Care magnanimously, because Ms. Johnson told the fourth grade it was a big dollar word, and because every time you say ‘I love you’ and really mean it, it gets easier.

And love. Love. It’s not a bathtub. It’s not the half of your sandwich you traded for Emily’s chocolate milk at lunch. Pass it around.  Make each other dinner and be that friend at 2 am. Love yourself enough to remember you need your sleep, too.

But mostly, care.

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Love Letter
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13 thoughts on “Love Letter

      1. Well, I’m just an amateur fun-ruiner, but this just struck me as quite notably inane. If you want me to do more than just snipe, I’ll say that Kate can write quite well when she’s writing about something meaningful or specific, and this is rather disappointing and dully bland in comparison.

        1. Not everything a given person writes is going to be of interest to you. I’m not saying you have to like it. I’m saying that you were being rude and it was unnecessary. It would be as though I went to a good restaurant, ordered a salmon dish, discovered I don’t actually like salmon, and started snarking loudly at the waiter about it.

          Don’t like this kind of writing? Fine. Close the browser tab and move along.

          1. jon

            great!

            one tells me to care, another tells me to close a browser tab.

            If you don’t like this kind of writing, you can do whatever the hell you want to do

  1. 3

    Today is my birthday. I’m turning 30 and it’s made me reflective. I’ve been looking for the right words to talk about how this makes me feel, what I want for the world around me in the coming years. This is perfect – exactly what I needed. Thank you.

  2. jon
    4

    @Stephany: no, I’m trying to say that I don’t respond well to orders 🙂

    (honestly, I really don’t get how you came to your conclusion after reading my post)

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