I was cleaning and sorting out the attic yesterday and came across a box that I haven’t looked at in many years. It was my letter box. Every time I got a letter in the mail, or a nice card I wanted to hold onto, I would place it in this shoe box. I’ve probably changed shoe boxes over the years to hold the many letters I’ve put in there. There are a lot of them.

Most of the letters are from friends of mine from Texas, who I now am back in touch with through various social networking sites. I lived in Texas when I was younger, during middle school, and I had the best set of friends anyone could ever have. I’d forgotten about all the letters till last night, when I found them. My friend Erin sent me cedar leaves from cedar trees and they still have the same sweet smell now that they did when I first opened the letter.

There are also other letters, ones from my friends in Massachusetts, that I saved as well. I have postcards and notes that I stashed away, and letters my grandparents sent me in college, for my birthdays. I even have a couple letters from this Boy in Croatia that I used to chat with.

I haven’t gotten a chance to reread all the letters or to even look through all of them. But knowing that they’re there makes me happy. It’s almost like my whole childhood, or a good chunk of it, has been sealed away in those letters. A me that once was, still is perhaps, can be found if I reach further back into time to remember where I was when I first read these letters.

One of these days I may start writing letters again. Even though the internet has made it easier to write to the people we can’t actually see everyday, it’s often just nice to have a physical letter, in someone else’s handwriting. A real letter makes you feel special, because someone had to sit and take time out of their own day to share their thoughts with you. And actually put it in the mail to send it.

I’ll always cherish these letters, no matter how old I get, or where life takes me. Their words are too precious to me. Words of my friends, my youth, my family…words that inspired me to be the person I am today.