Finding something you wrote or someone wrote to you years ago...

[NeverlandClub23]

Have you ever been going through things and found things that you wrote when you were a kid or letters/cards you were given? I was going through a huge box of letters/cards and found a list I wrote when I was 20 of all of the reasons not to get back together with my ex (he was a MAJOR bad boy and I had a huge weakness for taking him back every time for two years). I made a list of all of the reasons I shouldn't get back together with him and it was 3 pages long front and back! I started reading them and I couldn't believe what I had put up with and was so thankful that part of my life was over.

I also found a letter I had written to a friend (and apparently never sent) when I was about 7 that was nothing but question after question and at the very end said:

P.S. Write me back
P.P.S. Write me back about your summer and expectations (expectations of what I have no idea)
P.P.S.S. Write me back with your answers to every question and your expectations (evidently I loved the word "expectations")
P.P.P.S.S. You better write me back (I also, evidently, had to force people to be my friends )

So have you found things that made you laugh, cry, or remember good times? I called my Mom after a few of the things I found and we laughed and laughed.

 

[bicker]

I found some early transcripts of chats between my wife and I, from the late 1980s, before we were married. What a blast.

 

[ckay87]

It's interesting, isn't it, how well and how detailed we wrote when we used pen and paper back in the day. I know that today we are often warned about how things we share in cyberspace aren't at all private and will float around out there indefinitely. But you know...those paper writings didn't necessarily disappear either, did they? And they were soooo much more detailed!

I helped a friend....a slight hoarder....move not long ago. I found in her things letters that I had written her in college (we wrote each other during breaks.) In those letters was some really ugly stuff I had written about a 3rd friend who I happened to be fighting with at the time. This person is, and has always been, my best friend, but it was just a rough spot. So yea, we had a little campfire that evening.

 

[daughtersrus]

Have you ever been going through things and found things that you wrote when you were a kid or letters/cards you were given? I was going through a huge box of letters/cards and found a list I wrote when I was 20 of all of the reasons not to get back together with my ex (he was a MAJOR bad boy and I had a huge weakness for taking him back every time for two years). I made a list of all of the reasons I shouldn't get back together with him and it was 3 pages long front and back! I started reading them and I couldn't believe what I had put up with and was so thankful that part of my life was over.

I also found a letter I had written to a friend (and apparently never sent) when I was about 7 that was nothing but question after question and at the very end said:

P.S. Write me back
P.P.S. Write me back about your summer and expectations (expectations of what I have no idea)
P.P.S.S. Write me back with your answers to every question and your expectations (evidently I loved the word "expectations")
P.P.P.S.S. You better write me back (I also, evidently, had to force people to be my friends )

So have you found things that made you laugh, cry, or remember good times? I called my Mom after a few of the things I found and we laughed and laughed.

For me, it wasn't a letter but a list of questions. About a year after DD was born, we realized that something just wasn't right and starting to search for a medical diagnosis.

Of course, I searched the internet myself and would right down questions, concerns and names of diseases that I found. The diagnosis process for us was long and took over 6 years and involved many doctors and tests.

A few months after DD was diagnosed, I was cleaning out our computer desk and came across a tablet. I'm not sure when I wrote it but it said "Have they checked for ..." and listed 4 diseases. Next to it, I wrote "testing not needed as UOA test came back normal." To my surprise, the name of the disease that DD did have was on the list.

Sadly, had DD been diagnosed earlier when I asked the questions, she would have been a candidate for a BMT that would have stopped the progression of the disease. Her life would be much closer to normal than it will be now.

I know that this probably isn't what you meant by your question but it's what came to mind. Probably because DD's 16th birthday was just this weekend and it's always a reminder of the disease.

 

[NeverlandClub23]

I know that this probably isn't what you meant by your question but it's what came to mind. Probably because DD's 16th birthday was just this weekend and it's always a reminder of the disease.

I'm so sorry! That must've been hard to see that on the list . Happy belated 16th birthday to your DD though!

 

[kristilew]

I'm not a journal keeper, but the times DH was away for Army stuff I always wrote to him nightly. Reading back through those letters, and later emails, are like looking at a snapshot of my life at that moment in time.

The ones from when he was off at Airborne and Air Assualt schools one summer during college are special to me because they are full of my hopes and dreams for who we each would become and a life we might build together - and so much of that has come true. (Though much of it was silly young girl stuff, too )

The ones from when he was deployed are a reflection of single parenting in all its glory!

 

[NotUrsula]

My sister gave me a piece of furniture when my mother's house was sold, and one day I pulled a drawer out of it and found a letter from my grandmother underneath. It was actually a letter to my Dad about that same sister having had her second child. I read it and cherished it because I had never heard my grandmother's "voice" before -- she died when I was 4, about a year after the letter was written. I did give it to my sister, though, since she was the subject of the letter.

I started corresponding with one of my Dad's brothers a few years before he (my uncle) died. It was eerie how similar his and my Dad's writing styles were -- reading a letter from that uncle was almost like having my Dad back again, some 20 years after his death.

 

[bumbershoot]

A few months after DD was diagnosed, I was cleaning out our computer desk and came across a tablet. I'm not sure when I wrote it but it said "Have they checked for ..." and listed 4 diseases. Next to it, I wrote "testing not needed as UOA test came back normal." To my surprise, the name of the disease that DD did have was on the list.

Sadly, had DD been diagnosed earlier when I asked the questions, she would have been a candidate for a BMT that would have stopped the progression of the disease. Her life would be much closer to normal than it will be now.

Dang.

 

[MomRN]

My grandma passed away a few months ago, and I have been going throught her stuff. There are letters from me when I was little, her and my grandpa while he was in the Korean War, and a recent discovery... letters from my dad when my mom and he was going through a divorce when I was five.

Whoa...talk about putting things into perspective. I remember my step-dad hitting me once, and my dad coming over and talking to him outside, and then my step-dad never touched me again. A little perspective into what happened there. And all my life my mom always told me my dad never wanted me, he just wanted, stuff...far from the truth. I already have a strained relationship with my mom, and since reading those it won't be any better, but whoa... talk about pieces being put together.

 

[doxdogy]

I remember when my grandfather died about 30 years ago we found an old briefcase stuffed with papers. After digging through the papers my dad gave me some old letters. They were letters that my mother wrote to my grandparents and other relatives when they were stationed in Oahu. There was one letter when she told her parents that she was pregnant with me. Letters after I was born and letters my sister (she died when she was 12) wrote to our cousins back in the states. The saddest letter was written by my sister's Godmother detailing her funeral to my parents. Apparently my father's request to come back to the mainland for the funeral was denied. That one sad letter aside, it was nice to get a feel for the sister that died when I was only a year old.

 

[pigletgirl]

I used to have a penpal from Spain. When I moved away to college I found them all again, and it made me cry. I was so innocent and naive back in the day.

 

[BernardandMissBianca]

I have a box of letters and notebooks from DH. When he was in the Navy we weren't big talkers (still aren't we mostly text and skype) so we traded a note book before every underway. He would have it for a trip then I would respond during the next trip.
He also wrote lots of letters and saved them for when he came back.

 

[heatherleigh]

I have tons of them from h.s. and college. I am looking at one now. Nothing interesting, but I'll post a small excerpt.

This was from my friend during my Jr. year in h.s.: "How's school? Here well our schedule is going to change next week because we had a real short lunch but with the schedule change it will be longer. So are you going to be a cheerleader again? Man, without Lisa (the old captain) the cheerleaders here SUCK! Maybe Diane is good but the rest aren't that good. I don't know but we had a pep rally today and the girls did a cheer- boy it was quiet".

All my old letters were like this. Just meaningless drivel, but I remember being so excited to check the mail!

 

[Mimi1965]

I found the letters I wrote my parents back in my first year in college-in the olden days before computers and cell phones-what is funniest is how inexpensive everything was-compared to nowadays!

 

[A4Disney]

Have you ever been going through things and found things that you wrote when you were a kid or letters/cards you were given? I was going through a huge box of letters/cards and found a list I wrote when I was 20 of all of the reasons not to get back together with my ex (he was a MAJOR bad boy and I had a huge weakness for taking him back every time for two years). I made a list of all of the reasons I shouldn't get back together with him and it was 3 pages long front and back! I started reading them and I couldn't believe what I had put up with and was so thankful that part of my life was over.

I also found a letter I had written to a friend (and apparently never sent) when I was about 7 that was nothing but question after question and at the very end said:

P.S. Write me back
P.P.S. Write me back about your summer and expectations (expectations of what I have no idea)
P.P.S.S. Write me back with your answers to every question and your expectations (evidently I loved the word "expectations")
P.P.P.S.S. You better write me back (I also, evidently, had to force people to be my friends )

So have you found things that made you laugh, cry, or remember good times? I called my Mom after a few of the things I found and we laughed and laughed.

Too funny ..My dh kept all the notes I wrote to him in high school(1990 and 91)it's so funny to go back and read them.They fill 2 big nike shoeboxes and they are all wrapped up in that tiny,square tucked way so it's a lot of letters lol

I was a tad melodramatic as a teen lol

 

[luvsmickeymouse]

I still have the notes from when I adopted my son from Korea. I wrote about how long the wait was to have him home. Then later on, I did it again, though didn't have as much time, for my son before he came home from the Phillipines.

I wished I had saved all my notebooks from when I was growing up. I threw them away when my sister found them and she and my mom had a good time at my expense reading them. I will never forget how hurt I was.

Lately though, I have been writing again, in a notebook, not online. I love to keep a notebook.

 

[cybrkitn]

I found some old notes I passed to DH back in H.S. when we were dating. I've also kept his letters as well. That's going on 23 years ago. I'm amazed that we both held onto them as well as how bad my handwriting was back then.

I've also found letters I kept from an old pen pal I had from England back when I was a teenager. We stopped writing to each other years ago and I've often wondered how he's doing.

 

[tonilea]

I found a note a that my best friend and I had written back and forth. The subject was her date with my DH (of course - he wasn't my DH then). In it, she comments that kissing him was like kissing her brother. lol

 

[MIGrandma]

My Mom gave me two letters that I wrote to my Dad when I was in Florida with my Mom and Grandparents over Christmas break when I was 15 (I'll be 53 next month). I used orange ink! And I couldn't believe how my handwriting looked. One thing that really stood out was that I told Dad we stayed at a Days Inn on the way down, at TWELVE DOLLARS for the night!!!