"The complete visceral good I see in what I do for those people brightens my day more than any music or any accomplishment I've yet to experience."

This letter has a kind of embarrassing preface for me, I am blushing just thinking about it. But the entirety of the letter makes me feel so wonderful, here it is for your enjoyment.

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Preface

Well, I found your letter May 28th on the Belmont bus. I have to say, I thought you were very attractive and thought I saw you looking back a good bit, but being reserved and shy around the type, I just locked into my gameboy. Also, Patrick is a name that I fell in love with once on the CTA alread, so the old memories flooded back quite heavily afterwards (a story for another time). We got off at the same stop (Belmont/Damen), and I saw you had left a letter. When I read it, I certainly can appreciate the intent and what a unique way of getting into people's heads. So to you Patrick James Gill I write:

How do I survive? I've survived up to this point of my life by constantly changing. The luxury of youth has allowed me to make lots of mistakes, explore new interests, and most of all mold into a multifaceted individual. 12 years of my life devoted to music now helps me get through my greatest stresses with beautiful and tumultuous tones, and appreciate the intricate nuances within. 3 years of leading a pride movement in one of the most fundamentally religious states prepared me for how to deal with bigotry and living as a second class citizen. Today, I can sympathize with the most downtrodden of people and appreciate their struggles. I've begun a career as a nurse and work in the emergency department. I watch people die, people dying, and people reborn. The complete visceral good I see in what I do for those people brightens my day more than any music or any accomplishment I've yet to experience.

The example that will forever stand out to me: a man came in because his musician daughter had forced him to. His chest had felt "heavy" for twenty four hours. I began the usual actions for this and I saw immediately that he was having a heart attack. The next forty minutes of my time in that patients life was spent hurriedly preparing him for a life-saving procedure. The entire time, his daughter stood by the bed and I asked her to hold his hand and talk to him as I explained everything going on around him. Then, I took him to have a cardiac catheterization. Four hours later, I went to the intensive care unit to see how it had gone. His daughter was by the bed, holding her father's hand, and he opened his eyes and smiled.

The synestheisa of everything that's happened to me, all of experiences, at least somewhat prepare me somewhat for whatever happens when I walk out of this apartment every day. These twenty-three years of family, music, gay rights, medicine, and athletics will come to play as I become a flight nurse in the United States Air Force. The chapter to begin will take me all over the world as I see soldiers fighting everyday to survive.

(this section had a signature of the contributor and their address)


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As a bit of an explanation for the preface, I have been dropping notes that explain the project and ask for readers and contributions. They mainly are placed on the CTA.