my heart. Maybe you felt the love I sent you.
I deleted your e-mail, but I had to add it to my senior year me-moir binder first, but don’t worry, no one will ever read it. You remember I keep all my life’s important writings in individual sheet protectors in a locked binder wrapped in a pillowcase in a box under my bed. Your secret is very safe.
I’m just so selfish on some level because what stuck with me more than all the bad stuff you had to go through was the fact that I am really important to you. I’m so confused about what it is about me that is worth that kind of care. I just looked in the mirror for a bunch of minutes to see if I could see it, and I couldn’t. I don’t see the me that you see. I wish for just a little bit I could climb into you and then you could climb into me and then we could tell each other what we saw there. I really think that is the only thing that could help me feel better.
Also, I think it might be awful that a part of me is glad that you have something you keep hidden in the back of your mind tied up in a little bow. But, I have to tell you, there were a few times when I’ve looked into your eyes, and I saw that there was something messy about you. Don’t be mad at me. It made me love you. (Also, your kind of messy does not make you ugly in any way.)
XOXOXO.
Danielle
*CLASS ASSIGNMENT* 1/23
Essay Assignment #12: Something Beautiful
(Ms. Harrison is unable to see the real beauty I put forth here. And I even included parenthetical documentation, like we were working on in class! Poor Ms. Harrison! B-.)
Danielle Levine
English 12
Ms. Harrison
Period 4
Ms. Harrison, I really feel like I have to explain myself first before I get into the meat of this essay. I am going to write about something that at first is not going to seem beautiful at all, and I don’t want you to think I’m crazy and don’t know the difference between beautiful and ugly because believe me I do. But I have a father who told me that sometimes things we think are beautiful end up hideous and other things that we think are “lackluster,” as he says, end up really shining. (I feel like one of those “lackluster” things sometimes. I hope someday I end up shining.) Anyway, I don’t think I personally know about this shining business yet, but my dad is smart and I trust I will someday really get what he means. (There are a lot of things that people I respect say or write that I sort of get but not fully. Frustrating.)
My father told me about this news story that happened a while ago to the Amish people. He is very in to sharing poignant information with me. He said that a deranged man wandered into a schoolhouse in the Amish community and killed all these young girls. (This is NOT the beautiful part.)
My father told me that in a follow-up story in the news, we all got to learn how this community publicly forgave the man who did this to all those girls, who took all those girls from their families, who cut their lives so short. At first, I was mad at my dad for telling me this story even though he told me that “knowledge is power,” and we must be open to hearing about difficult topics so we can grow. However, my point was: How could those people forgive that man? How could they forget about those girls’ lives like that? My father said forgiveness does not entail forgetting about the people who are lost, but at the moment I was in no condition to process his point. I don’t want to get into all the details of how this conversation went down at my house because I actually got super upset. Even my housekeeper, Martha, ended up in tears, and she is usually very stoic; I have the hardest time figuring out what makes her tick because she usually never shows any emotion about anything. (Figuring out what to get her for Christmas is impossible; I think we just give her cash.)
Anyway, the point is, eventually, I opened my mind just a little bit about what a miracle forgiveness can be if you can actually do it. I’m