Owning Our Part-1: The Letter

Some letters change nothing. Others change the way you remember everything that came before.

I had my doubts about Gavin. I guess they started the moment I met him—standing in a loose circle of strangers. I smiled at everyone, and when I got to him and smiled, he looked away. Not shyly—more like he couldn’t be bothered. Like he’d already made up his mind about me.

Still, after a few weeks something shifted. He was struggling. I could see it, even if he tried to hide it behind bravado and leadership polish. So, I wrote him a letter—not to fix him, just to make him feel better I suppose. I didn’t expect anything in return.

A week later, he handed me a folded piece of paper. No explanation, just a look. The letter was part thank-you note, part emotional confessional, and somehow—without trying to be—it felt like poetry. Not the polished kind. The kind that spills out of you because it has nowhere else to go.

He wrote:

You are the rockstar they talk about - and by that, I mean you exemplify everything I love about this program and more over life in general. You have that glow about you that makes others happy even if you are just sitting in a back corner reading or picking your nose. And especially if you are picking your nose while cross-cutting a 7’ log with one hand while the jaunty teen across from you is whimpering for mercy. You are the sunshine.

He had called me sunshine once before. I’d looked at him sideways when he said it, half-suspicious. It had sounded too smooth. Like maybe he said it frequently. Like maybe he knew it would work on me.

But here, on the page, it felt different. Honest. Unpolished. Real.

And then there was this:

You are a titan. Thank you so much. Moments are few and far between and you have created a lot for me these last few weeks.

I once had a conversation that all we really need to say or hear in letters is— ‘I am thinking about you’—and really, I think that’s enough.

Most of the time.

You're my special.

I read that last part again and again. Folded the paper. Unfolded it. Carried it around until the creases softened and the words started to feel like something I wasn’t ready to name.

I still didn’t know what to call whatever this was between us. But I knew it mattered.

And I was starting to believe he might mean it.