Why don't you write back?

Dear all,

I know I tend to be secretive and defensive. So maybe you don't know, and have not yet figured out, that I am very slow to warm to new people, and even slower to make friends. You may not realize your membership in a tiny elite. Remember how you thought I despised you for the first months or years of our acquaintance? Well, I hope you overcame that just as I overcame my unfriendly nature. However you managed it, you wormed your way into my confidences. And I do not intend to let you slip out of my grasp. (Cue the lightning, evil cackles, menacing shadows cast on a dungeon wall.)

Well, I'm still well within my experimentally-determined 2-year-minimum friend-making timeline here, but I have been trying to maintain my connections with you, my friends, across the globe. I think of you. I write you letters and send you packages and postcards. Why don't you write back?

I know you're busy. I'm busy, too. And you probably make friends faster than I do, so you are spending time with your new friends. But I am eminently reachable -- you have my mailing address, my email address, my instant messaging identity, my phone number, my facebook account, my skype information. You don't have to reply at length, or in finely crafted language, or even with substance. It would be nice to hear from you, even just a one-sentence email saying hello. That takes, what, 30 seconds to think about, write, and send?

I miss you guys and wish I heard from you more often.

Lila

P.S. And to my readers here in Toronto: hang in there. I warm up, I promise.