The Unreliable Narrator

Years after I’d left home to marry and move quite far away, I kept obsessing about what had happened to my drawer full of letters. I had no memory of destroying them, and, yet, I couldn’t imagine I had been so foolish as to leave them behind. Afterall, they were filled with incriminating evidence that I would have rather died than have my mother find and read. The letters I obsessed over were those I had received from friends after I moved to Florida. They represented one side of a flurry of correspondence between me and at least a dozen of my closest friends from Indiana. Starting at the end of my sophomore year of high school and headlong through college, the letters I wrote and received kept me tethered to my old life—one I believed that without, I would die.

At some point, I had to conclude that I must have gotten rid of them. When I went through my parents’ home after they died and found no remnants at all of them, I was finally convinced of their demise at my hand. My parents kept everything. And to be fair to them, I’m pretty sure they would never have opened and read them. Still, their disappearance haunted me. I thought I would really have enjoyed going back through them. I thought I was pretty clear on who I was, what I had thought, the things I probably complained about and celebrated during those years, but I wanted validation.

A point of pride for me has been an unshakable confidence that I have a good memory. I rely on it heavily to come up with ideas for this blog. I often take liberties in my storytelling to make the story a bit more entertaining, but, for the most part, the heart and soul of the story is completely true. So, when one of those friends I had so ardently corresponded with during high school told me he had kept the letters I had written to him, I was quite intrigued. For several years he teased me about the “love letters” I had written to him and swore that one day he would give them to me to read.

The notion that I had written him love letters was ridiculous. I was positive that he had labeled them such to bait me. There was only one person from my youth for whom I had ever carried a torch, and it wasn’t him. I had never written to my true crush and he had never written to me. That story would forever rely completely on my memory.

A few weeks ago, my old friend handed me a manila envelope. He said, “These are the letters I told you about.” I took the envelope as he further instructed that I could take them home with me to read, but that he wanted them back. I thanked him and took them with the idea that I would transcribe them to then possibly use as fodder for my blog. I opened the first one and was completely shocked by what I read.

As I read through them, I had to keep reminding myself that I was only 16 years old when I wrote the first one, and not yet 19 when I penned the last. Nevertheless, as the narrator of my own story, I have to say that the letters clearly showed I was unreliable. How could I have been such a duplicitous and calculating little shit? There was no getting around it, I had been. Until being confronted with the evidence of my horribleness, I would never have believed it about myself.

Reading those letters launched me into a sort of identity crisis. For several weeks after reading and transcribing them, I dreamed about the things I had said in nightmarish ways. I couldn’t stop thinking about some of the language I had used, and the outright lies I had written to this unsuspecting person I dared to call a friend. I was, and am, ashamed of myself.

I’ve recovered a bit since then, but felt the need to atone for my younger self. I would like to explain to my friend my current thoughts about the content of those letters, but I think doing so would only make me feel better. I’m pretty sure that I would break his heart. Afterall, he’s been hanging on to them for over 40 years. The real takeaway for me is that I now know my memory isn’t as great as I thought it was. I’m also pretty sure I prefer my memory’s version as it’s quite a bit easier on the conscience.

Copyright DJ Anderson, 2019