Lauren did not expect to ever hear from Elliot again. Their last letter dated from 2014, and resulted in the book Bedtime Stories, av. in the LSH store.
Nine years after the date, they pick up where they left off.
.

Dear Elliot,

Thank you so very much for writing me. It was such a rich, overwhelming and even unexpected (even though you had contacted me prior to see if the email address was still good) experience, to read your familiar “On the road”-esque style.
A style I never dug from Kerouac but that you can pour over me, and it will always feel like an old friend visiting me and both finding nothing changed. 

By answering you by blog instead of a private email, a move I would never dare with my current pen-pal, also because I consider him to be more a pen lover, “Nikki” (the blogged letters I wrote to him as Lauren 1998/1997 are entirely fictional), I hope to return the favor that you too can say:
Nothing changed.
She’s still Lauren the writer.

And you, my friend, are still Elliot the writer.
And now more than ever, because your life has become so much richer through all the powerful self-reflection. I would definitely not say your life has become easier coming of age, but your ability to self-reflect, your keen eye for analysis, your empathy, intelligence and adaptability, they shine like never before.

You have become a true powerhouse of a writer, my friend, and I urge you to start expressing yourself. Start a blog, start a manuscript, self-publish a book, but start!
Because you’re in Bon Jovi’s words nearly halfway there, on the timeline of your life, and you’ve been ready for this since your teens.
You’ve been ready, but I was afraid to push it, because publishing and becoming famous in your teens, is something I think no adult should encourage a child to do, unless they themselves are there to guard and to guide.

But you are a child no more.
And you are ready.

I hear you struggling to find your way through a myriade of talents, expertises; I see you being highly successful yet at the same time deeply hurt by long-term relationships;
I see you having to face being dislocated, a theme that seems to have been running through your life for as long as I have known you.
But you have your gold, Elliot.

If you have been able to hold on to the files of everything you wrote in your life, and if you have kept your emails, then you have a book. You have a blog.
And if you didn’t keep them, then for one, I could send them to you. And two;
Then you still have your talent.

Write your biography, or write a novel inspired by your life.
Because you have lived a thousand lives, in one.

I feel I will write you more, at a future date. That you and I are in for another round. But I also feel, that for now, this post however short, was the right one.
A short answer, giving you something to hold on to, for right now.
(🎸🎧We got each other, and that’s a lot!🎶🎵)

Giving you back the dream, as if I kept it for you all those years;
You are a writer, Elliot.

Go write.

.~Lauren

An unexamined life is not worth living