Dear Person Who Stole From Me:
Hi, I’m Ryan.
You don’t know me – but you climbed into a black 2012 Hyundai Elantra parked out front of our Gaithersburg home on Monday night-Tuesday morning.
You rummaged through my center console and glove compartment, scattered whatever wasn’t valuable to you onto my passenger seat and floor mat. You made a mess of an otherwise strategically organized aging car. That upsets me because I have things the way they are for a reason.
Bottom line: You took a few things from that car that aren’t yours.
By now, I might presume you’ve forgotten about what you’ve done. Perhaps it was a Monday night’s worth of nothing to you – a quick reach into an old car and running off in the dark of the night to celebrate your victory.
(I’m unsure how you managed to jimmy my door open – because the car was locked, as it invariably is; nevertheless, here we are.)
I want to tell you what you actually stole from – because you don’t understand. I want you to understand what you did. You took a small, smooth, pebble-like stone from an aqua-colored Hospice of Washington County lunchbox.
“Really, Ryan – a stone?” Who cares, right? I care.
Yeah – it’s a small, little hospice stone one; a stone that has no inherent meaning to you. I hope you didn’t throw it away yet. That stone is what’s called a hospice rock (or, rather, I call it that). I kept my hospice stone inside my car so I could hold it while I drove. I hold it and rub it in between my fingers when I’m especially anxious. I hold it at red lights. I hold it when I’m battling the daily Maryland traffic situation.
That stone reminds me of my late grandparents – people who loved me, people who once sat in the very seat you rifled through, people who mattered to me in ways they will never matter to you. You grabbed it on a whim. I carried that stone on purpose.
Can I get another stone? Yes. But that’s not the point. I liked that stone.
My car is nearly fifteen years old. I bought it on August 24, 2011, the day after my grandmother Maureen’s 79th birthday. I remember that date because Maureen has since passed away – and she sat in the passenger seat of that car many times over.
That car you broke into – it drove my daughter to school. It’s been to Arizona, to Maine, to New Hampshire more times than I can count. The paint has stories. The seats are cloth and coffee-stained. It makes noises sometimes when you hit the brakes. It has 274K+ miles. Maybe the car itself is in hospice – but I’m keeping it until it doesn’t run anymore.
You couldn’t have known the value of the items you carelessly stole from me. I’m not pretending you could. That’s the whole point of a letter like this – to tell you the part you couldn’t see.
And you would think I’m nuts for writing an open letter to someone unlikely to read it online. But stranger things have happened in my life. I’ll take my chances.
So here’s the truth, all of it, because I’m not going to dress this up and make it nice and pretty for you.
I’m pissed. I’m f’n angry.
I want to be honest about that before I get to the forgiveness part – because I don’t trust forgiveness that skips the anger. It makes me furious that you took something you didn’t work for. I went out and earned what was in that car.
That was my labor, my choice, my life.
You took what you could find – because it was there. You probably won’t get caught.
And worse than the things you stole – far worse – you walked into a space that held something sacred to me, and you didn’t even know you were standing in it. That makes me angrier than the theft itself.
And still, I’m writing this to give you a door.
Because here is what I’ve learned in life at 40 years old – mostly the hard way. I have opened my mouth one too many times in my life when I didn’t have the wisdom to share a thoughtful perspective.
I’ve made choices that I didn’t fully understand until the weight of the consequences hit me between the eyes.
Here’s what it is: I’ve made plenty of poor decisions in my teenage years and even into my 20s. Those mistakes have followed me into adulthood – and they still cost me in ways you wouldn’t fathom and comprehend from the outside.
I am, by my own honest accounting, a late bloomer – someone who took a long time to understand things that maybe should have come sooner.
And one of the things I finally understand, at this age, is that second chances are real. Somebody gave me one. More than one. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked hat in hand, seeking a second, third, fourth, and even a fifth opportunity to do right, to get it right, to live up to something, beyond my demons.
So I’m not going to pretend I’m better than you. I’m certainly not; I’m just further down the road.
Whatever course you’re on right now – taking what isn’t yours and betting you won’t get caught – I can tell you where it goes, because I’ve watched it go there. Poor choices catch up – eventually. They always catch up, not because of some cosmic justice, but because that’s just how it works.
The bill comes. The proverbial chickens come home to roost. And if you think you’re special – that it cannot happen to you – well, you aren’t. Nobody is spared. That’s life.
Somewhere along my uneven life path, I’ve learned to do things by the book because it’s a matter of honor and integrity.
Has anybody in life ever told you that they’re disappointed in you? Believe me, hearing someone say that can take your breath away – because it stings; it hurts. It’s supposed to hit you hard. I’ve had it happen a couple of times in life – my mother, people who knew I was better than whatever I was in that moment.
Maybe somebody told you that you couldn’t ask for help. Maybe you felt like you had to impress somebody, prove something, keep up with people who’d drop you the second you stopped. I get it. I understand it now at 40.
Or maybe you’re struggling? Or something beneath the surface hurts. I get it. I get it more than you can imagine.
If you do ever read this open letter – and I know the odds are almost nothing – I want you to know that I’m a Western Maryland boy with a public school education; I have no illusions about how the internet works.
But if you happen to stumble upon this article one day from a wayward Google search, I’d like you to give me my stone back.
No questions asked. Just give it back. I don’t care how you get it back to me – please give it back. Keep everything else you took – but please return the stone. I want it back. And I’d ask you for one thing – and I’m very serious: reach out to me. Not so I can hand you to a broken system that would brand you for the rest of your life – I’d genuinely rather not do that, and I mean it.
Reach out so we can talk, so someone who gives a damn can tell you, to your face, that the way you’re living right now has an exit, and you’re allowed to take it. That public school education taught me one thing that stuck with me more than anything else: when you make a mistake, you say you’re sorry, ask for forgiveness, and do better.
That’s it; that’s the whole instruction set. It’s not complicated. It’s never too late to start running it. I’m not stupid enough to think you’ll write back. But I’m not too proud to leave the door open in case you do.
Be better to yourself. The rest follows.
– Ryan
