Matty Struski - Return to Sender

 

 

I've always been a really great guy to break up with. [audience laughter] When I was in high school, I used to watch my friends go through these horrible breakups. And in attempts to win their exes back, they would always come up with these grand romantic gestures that look great when you see them in a rom com, but when you experience them in real life are just stalkery is the only word I can come up. I swore to my 17-year-old self that I would never become emotional over a breakup. No matter what happened, I would always maintain my dignity.

 

A couple of years later when I was in college, I met Sarah. She was amazing. She had pink hair, and she was an artist, and she loved to dance and sing karaoke and she just felt free. We used to stay up all night listening to music and talking about things that mattered. When we were together, I felt free. We just fell for each other really hard. Things were great, because I was young, and I was in love for the first time, and everything was new, and raw and I had never felt like this before in my life. I think that's why I had such a hard time when she broke up with me. 

 

The worst part of the breakup was that she didn't really give me a reason. She just chose another guy over me, and it just crushed me. Suddenly, my dignity and myself respect didn't seem to matter that much to me. I wanted to get her back and I wanted to tell her how I felt. But I'm not one for giant romantic stalkery gestures, so I grabbed a pen and I wrote the first love letter that I ever wrote in my life. I just poured my guts out on the page, and I told her how much I loved her and I told her that I've never loved anybody like I loved her and I could never see myself loving anybody else the way I loved her. Without her around me, I just felt empty and lost. 

 

I put this letter in an envelope and I mailed it to her and I just waited. I kept waiting and I didn't get a response from her. I felt so humiliated. I was so mad at myself for writing this letter. I just hated myself for not walking away with a clean break from this relationship. But eventually, I moved on and I got over Sarah and I graduated from college. I dated other women who broke up with me and I handled that with dignity and grace. [audience laughter] I moved from Boston to Los Angeles. My life was going pretty well. 

 

But I always, even years later, I hated the fact that I wrote this letter. It just haunted me. It was one of those things that hangs around in the back of your mind, taking you down a notch when you're feeling a little bit too good about yourself. I'd be walking down the street enjoying a beautiful day and thinking about how good my life was going, and then this voice would just be like, “Oh, yeah, but remember that letter you wrote to Sarah, you pathetic piece of shit?” And I'd be like, “Oh, yeah. Right.” [audience laughter] And so, that's how it was for a while. I would think about it. Not all the time, but when I did, it just really made me feel bad about myself. 

 

One day, I go home, and I grab my mail, and I'm thumbing through the mail and I just stop in my tracks, because there's a letter and it's from Sarah. I haven't talked to Sarah in 10 years since I wrote that letter to her. I open it up, and it's pretty short and it just says, “I'm going to be in LA pretty soon and I'd love to catch up with you and talk face to face.” She left her number, so I called her and we arranged to meet up at this coffee shop down the street from my apartment in Los Feliz. 

 

So, we ended up meeting up at the coffee shop. After we had some small talk and we caught up for a few minutes, she said, “Listen, the reason I got in touch with you is I met this guy and I'm moving in with him. I was cleaning out my apartment and going through my things and I stumbled across this,” and she pulls out the letter that I wrote her. I just froze. And she said, “I'm really sorry, I never responded to this. I was in a really bad place then. But you need to know I've been carrying this letter around for 10 years from place to place. It really helped me get through some rough times. Just being able to read it and know that somebody at some point loved me the way that you did, it really, it helped me and I just wanted to say thank you.” 

 

And then she slid the letter across the table to me and she said, “But the guy I'm with now is amazing.” [audience laughter] He's amazing, and I'm in a much better place in my life and I don't think that I need this letter anymore. [audience laughter] I just wanted to give it back to you. And part of me, [chuckles] part of me wanted to grab that letter and just run out into the street and light it on fire right there and destroy this symbol of humiliation that I've been carrying around for the last 10 years. But I didn't, because when I looked at it, the letter, it looked worn and it looked like it had been read and reread dozens of times over the years. 

 

I realized that letter meant a completely different thing to her than it did to me, where I saw shame and humiliation and embarrassment. She saw warmth and comfort and love. I just said, “Sarah, I wrote that letter for you, and I wanted you to have it. And a lot of things might have changed in the last 10 years, but that hasn't.” She just smiled and she put it back in her bag and we didn't talk about it again. 

 

We ended up spending a really great day together. We just hung out, we reminisced about old times, and she left. We kept in touch after that. We wrote letters back and forth for a bit, and then letters changed to emails, and emails changed to Facebook posts. We're both married now, and we both have kids of our own. 

 

Every once in a while, I still think about that letter. I'm amazed by how much different I feel about it now than I used to. I used to just feel so embarrassed by it. But now, I'm really proud that I wrote it. You know, I'm glad that I told her how I felt, even though it took us 10 years to talk about it. I'm glad that it was able to help her through some rough times in her life. I don't know what she ended up doing with that letter, but I like to think that she held onto it and I like to think that maybe someday if she's having a rough day, she might stumble across it again, and it might bring a smile to her face and help her through another rough time. It might have taken me 30 years to realize it, but that letter allowed me to have the most dignified breakup I've ever had in my life. Thank you.