Choices in life. It is strange to me at least that I was actually excited about the fact that I could possibly have my own personal typewriter once I got upstate. Ha! Excited about going to prison upstate!

Your efforts have awakened the writer in me and since it is my handwriting that sucks, the ability to type solves a host of problems. I wanted to share my good news with you and to tell you not to sweat typing any more of my stuff.

The number one item between us as far as I am concerned is the ability to share real thoughts with each other. You mention the lack of getting a conversation with my Dad. I love my parents and they have provided a great deal of support to me, but there is still that large emotional wasteland that we seem unable to bridge.

No matter what I write to them, I always get a letter back with how busy they are and what they are doing to help this or that person. Heck, when I finally was able to talk to them my first Monday here, they cut the phone call short because they were taking some widow out to the movies that night!

I do understand that you all have lives on the outside and I hope I make clear my respect for that from time to time. There is however, no limit to the value of your letters to me. The brief look into your life, whether your letter is a simple, "Hey, here's what I am up to today" or some of the more thought-provoking deeper stuff, they give me a lift.

Yes, even your latest letter about "feeling used" still let me know that I am alive and have some value, even if at that point all I seemed to be was a pain in your ass!

So please feel free to keep me up to date on your "being used" feelings. I will hopefully handle that with grace and dignity, but a lot of what we have shared is all part of the whole and I would be hard pressed to say any of it was a waste of your time.

Hindsight is 20/20 and if we always look back it is easy to say, "Damn, if only I would have taken the left back there." Well, you did not.

True, you could simply tell me to take a hike, kill the blog, never write to me again, and that would be the end of my involvement in your life. But that would ignore my opinion about the growth and comfort we have both gotten from this journey.

Time out, my lunch has arrived!
  ¶ 10:14 AM