2/27/2022
I’ve always been in love with the idea of love letters. It’s so innocent and real to have words of devotion in a physical form. Last year, inspired by the love letters written in fogged up windows, and those left in mailboxes, and the ones forgotten in the notes app, I decided to set up mailboxes in all of my favorite places. I filled the mailboxes with notepads and pens for people to write whatever they want. The books have since been filled with stories of love, loss, secrets, heartbreaking accounts of people missed, and with love letters. Love letters written to people far away, to people sitting right next to the author, to people missed, to people passed, to family, and to friends- there's even been a proposal in one of the notebooks. It’s so special to read these stories written by strangers, and to get a glimpse into the lives of the people around me. Reading their page in my little blue notebook may be my only interaction with them in my entire life, but I think that’s what makes it even more significant.
It's been a long process to get to the point I'm at with the mailboxes. I thought of the idea about three years ago but it was really just a half written plan in my mind until late 2020 when I decided to follow through with it. I set up one in the downtown area near my house that I was so excited about. I went late at night to put it in place so no one would see me, and by morning, it had already been taken down. I cut my losses with the $10 box I'd found on Craigslist, and forgot about it.
It was only a few months later when the idea came back to me and it couldn't have felt more intentional time-wise. Growing up, my dad used to bring us to a neighborhood near his old house that everyone referred to as "The Cliffs". It's a huge drop-off over the water and it was where him and his friends spent a lot of time as teenagers. I remember the first time he ever brought my brother and I there and thinking it was the most incredible place because being born in Florida, I had never seen anything similar to it. When I got my license, my friends and I followed in my dad's footsteps and spent lots of summer evenings there- watching the sunset or barefoot, climbing up the old oak trees surrounding the ocean front. By the time I turned 17, I was there almost every day. I was going through a really hard time in my life and it was the only place I could go to get away and take my mind off of everything happening around me. Reality felt so distant when I was there. In February of last year, I was walking my dog and saw a fallen mailbox sitting in front of an abandoned house. I knew it was my sign to start again, and I knew the perfect spot to the set up the first one. I scouted out a tree at the cliffs that felt perfect, and went later that week to put it in place. It was really encouraging for me to visit this place that was already so special to me, and to be able to look through a book filled with stories of joy written by strangers all around me. It was like a reminder that things would be okay and it helped me through those few months of sadness.
Since then, I’ve set up mailboxes all over the county. Dozens of them have been taken down, the notebooks have been stolen more times than I can count, and occasionally when I go to check up on one I haven't visited in a while, I'll notice it's vandalized or damaged in some way. It's kind of defeating to put so much time and effort into something like this just for people to destroy it. However, on the other hand, every time I visit one and see the lined pages filled with the warmth of a husband articulating his love to his wife of 30 years, or the messy handwriting of a teenage boy who wears his heart on his sleeve, or of a girl reminding her best friend that she adores her, it seems to make up for it. The diversity of people writing is insane to me. It feels so much bigger than I ever imagined it would be.
And it is.
There's one letter that was written in one of the first mailboxes I ever set up that has stuck with me so deeply that I think the words are permanently etched into my mind. It was a father writing to his daughter who had passed. I don't feel like it's my place to share his words, but I do think it's fair to say that reading that letter was when I realized how special this was. This man was dealing with one of the worst things I can ever imagine having to go through, and he felt comfortable enough to share this feeling with hundreds of strangers in something as vulnerable as a love letter. He could be a neighbor, a friend, someone I drove past on the way to the grocery store, and I would never even know, yet I carry him in my heart everyday because of his simple act of writing in a notebook I left behind. The connectedness that vulnerability creates is unreal.
I didn’t realize when I began writing this, that it’s been exactly a year since I set up that first box at the cliffs. It feels very full circle that the 1 year, by happenstance, also falls on Valentine’s day- a day celebrated solely with the intention of spreading love. All this to say, I love love letters, and I love people, and I love my little blue notebooks that are scattered all over Pinellas county and I love everyone who has ever written in one. I've been on a hiatus lately, but I'm back in business and intend to finally clear out the 14 mailboxes that have been in the back of my car for longer than I can remember, within the next few months. So if you see a mailbox of mine, leave a letter and tell someone you love them.
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