Hey, senpai. This one’s for you.
(I apologize in advance: this letter will be kind of long, very honest, and in places sound accidentally romantic [even though that won’t be intentional].)
I wrote you a letter earlier, but you’ve unfortunately read that one (other readers, see letter number two). Looking back and reading it now, all I can do is facepalm, because it’s so noobish and ridiculously sappy. Gah, and I thought I was mature when I was thirteen…
I’ll skip the part about meeting you, because you remember it just as well as I do (and if you didn’t initially, I’ve brought it up enough times by now). You probably remember it differently, though; I don’t know if your eyes skimmed right over me until the point when I approached you to ask you what book you were reading, or if you noticed me for a brief few seconds during the introduction games and then focused your attention on the next person. (I’m sorry; I really don’t mean to make this sound romantic, if it’s sounding that way. I’m just actually wondering this in my head, and this is how it’s coming out on paper… xD)
In any case, neither of us came to camp knowing we were going to meet each other and become friends, let alone have this friendship where I can’t see us running out of things to talk about, ever. I don’t know what mindset you had when you came to camp that year, but I remember being a little reluctant to go to this camp in Wisconsin I’d never been to before and why was I getting dragged along again with my family to another Bible camp just like I’d been dragged for the past eight years. And then BAM, paradigm shift.
I remember the first week, which I’ll shut up about as soon as I’ve explained myself in a few places. Everything was pretty tentative. It was common for there to be an empty chair between us when we sat together at lunch, just because we didn’t know each other well and I guess we didn’t want to make the other person uncomfortable. (That’s how I felt, anyway.) I got over my shyness and decided to start being your friend instead. Hence the confidence when I linked arms with you for Fruit Basket Upset (which probably freaked you out – sorry about that) and pulled you along to another bench. That wasn’t me trying to be brave or bossy or a freak – I just wanted to be your friend, and to show you that I wasn’t afraid of how weirded out you might be by me.
I didn’t want to leave camp, especially a day early. I got two hugs from you before I left. I cried a little (not in front of you). We weren’t close friends like we are now by the end of that first week, but I was scared to lose contact with you, a camp friend. I don’t talk to most of the friends I met at camp when I was younger; there wasn’t much of a way to keep in touch with them since we were too young for Facebook, so we just drifted apart. Even though we weren’t close friends (yet), I didn’t want that to happen in this case.
A few months later, at home, I mentioned something to my dad about wanting to get in touch with you again. He managed to find your address, with help from the camp dean (they’re friends, so don’t get freaked out thinking he stalked you or anything), and I sent you a letter, and you know how it goes from here -- emailing throughout the school year, until I turned thirteen and was old enough to get a Facebook, at which point that became our primary form of communication (and it still is).
At camp the next year, in 2012, it was different. We had come to know each other better by know, and things weren’t as awkward. The empty chair between us from last year had disappeared (maybe that was because you bathing the table in lemonade by accident broke any remaining ice). The family group setup sucked that year: I was in Red, you were in Green, Tia was in Blue, and my parents were the captains of Yellow. I didn’t know anybody in my group, so everybody was deluded into thinking I was shy because I barely said a word at first. Between events that required the three of us to be separated, we assembled at our chosen shelterhouse and talked. None of us were comfortable in a swimsuit, so we opted to sit and talk some more during the 1.5-hour-duration swim time every day. We all got to know each other even more.
