Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was thinking of you last night. You know why
Speaker 2: I couldn't sleep, And rather than count sheep, I counted
Speaker 2: the toilets in your house, and I fell asleep after
Speaker 2: six or seven. But then I couldn't remember how many toilets?
Speaker 3: Do you?
Speaker 2: Is it again? No, that doesn't sound right at all.
Speaker 2: Count again, let's do it together. The one in the basement,
Speaker 2: one on the ground floor, the one on the balcony,
Speaker 2: the one outdoors on the front steps before you come
Speaker 2: into the house, the one on the roof. There was
Speaker 2: the one wait, what's that like dying?
Speaker 4: I already told you you wanted to argue with you.
Speaker 2: We're not having an argument. We're having a civilized conversation.
Speaker 2: We could have a podcast called toilet Talk from Gimblet Media.
Speaker 2: I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is Heavyweight Today's episode Sarah
Speaker 2: right after the break, This is Sarah Haybart.
Speaker 5: A bear, Hey bear, a bear?
Speaker 1: A bear?
Speaker 4: I see?
Speaker 2: Okay, So the h is silent, Yeah, silent because Sarah
Speaker 2: Abert lives in Louisiana and her family is Cajun. Do
Speaker 2: you speak French?
Speaker 5: I know enough French to know when my grandmother is
Speaker 5: gossiping about me.
Speaker 2: When I was a kid, the adults would talk in Yiddish.
Speaker 5: Could you understand what they were saying about you?
Speaker 2: It was never great. Yeah, Sarah's here to tell me
Speaker 2: about a letter she received a while back. Her husband, Chris,
Speaker 2: usually brings in the mail, so he was the one
Speaker 2: who first handed it to her. The return address on
Speaker 2: the envelope said Abbeville, the tiny town where Sarah grew up.
Speaker 5: So I opened the letter and I pull it out,
Speaker 5: and it's like, it is a handwritten letter.
Speaker 2: Sarah says she can't remember the last time someone hand
Speaker 2: wrote her a letter. And then there was the handwriting itself,
Speaker 2: which was big and bubbly and written onlined paper, the
Speaker 2: kind torn from a spiral bound notebook, like.
Speaker 5: I feel like I remember getting letters in middle school
Speaker 5: that kind of looked like this.
Speaker 2: Can you read it?
Speaker 5: Yes, I'd be happy to. So it says, hey, how
Speaker 5: are you doing? It has been so long since I've
Speaker 5: seen or spoke to you. You were my best friend.
Speaker 5: My dad was Nick and my mom was Terry. We
Speaker 5: got in trouble at my house one night when you
Speaker 5: slept over because we were rollerblading in the kitchen and
Speaker 5: we put down water all over the floor, which is
Speaker 5: like a very Cajun way of saying, like we spilt
Speaker 5: water everywhere. You were my very best friend, and I
Speaker 5: don't really remember what happened, but I have thought of
Speaker 5: you often through the years, and I found you. It
Speaker 5: would be so amazing to visit and get to catch
Speaker 5: up with you. And then there's a cell number her address. Sorry,
Speaker 5: it's so weird to read this aloud.
Speaker 2: And the reason it's so weird, Sarah says, is that
Speaker 2: she has absolutely no idea who this person is.
Speaker 5: At all, Like I don't have a memory of her.
Speaker 2: But that's not even the weirdest part. The weirdest part,
Speaker 2: Sarah says, is the name at the end of the.
Speaker 5: Letter, Sarah Abert, which is my name.
Speaker 2: In the letter, the writer refers to herself as the
Speaker 2: other Sarah aber. So wait a second. So you read
Speaker 2: this letter and at the bottom she.
Speaker 5: Signed it, sincerely Sarah ben abear so Beth with a thch,
Speaker 5: and my name is Sarah bess abar b ss. It's
Speaker 5: literally like pretty much the same name, right.
Speaker 2: What was your first thought like when you finished reading this,
Speaker 2: is this a scam?
Speaker 6: Like?
Speaker 5: I told a couple of friends about it, and they're
Speaker 5: like this is a scam. They're like, this person's trying
Speaker 5: to get money from you or something.
Speaker 2: Sarah's suspicions only deepened after googling the other Sarah.
Speaker 5: My generation of people. We grew up on the internet, right, so,
Speaker 5: like it's probably possible to find like a photo of
Speaker 5: me in my twenties. I can't find anything on this person.
Speaker 5: Like I can't find like a MySpace page or like
Speaker 5: old Internet forum post. Like it's bizarre to me that
Speaker 5: someone would be my age and not have some sort
Speaker 5: of trail on the internet.
Speaker 4: Uh huh.
Speaker 2: The whole thing does sound pretty scammy. And yet for
Speaker 2: an entire year now, Sarah hasn't been able to throw
Speaker 2: the letter away. There are parts of it that just
Speaker 2: feel oddly familiar.
Speaker 5: Like when she says the stuff about rollerblading. The more
Speaker 5: I read this letter, the more I'm like, something about
Speaker 5: that does feel true, Like I do feel like I
Speaker 5: got in trouble at some point for rollerblading in a
Speaker 5: kitchen when I was a kid.
Speaker 2: Is it real or is it fake? Sarah has come
Speaker 2: to me to render a verdict, and so, like any
Speaker 2: good investigative journalist, I defer to the experts in this
Speaker 2: case the expert I turn to whenever I think I'm
Speaker 2: being scammed.
Speaker 7: I would say that maybe three times a year you
Speaker 7: send me an email saying, is this am I being phished?
Speaker 2: This is Alex Goldman, the former co host of the
Speaker 2: reply All podcast.
Speaker 7: You get emails from like your wife and you're like Alex,
Speaker 7: She says they should bring home salmon.
Speaker 8: Is this for real?
Speaker 2: I look at a lot of things as a long con.
Speaker 2: Alex once traveled all the way to India to investigate
Speaker 2: a scam call he received. Scams are his specialty. So
Speaker 2: I lay out the letter to him, the identical names,
Speaker 2: the torn notebook paper, the big and bubbly handwriting, and
Speaker 2: then I await his ruling.
Speaker 7: Okay, I mean just no one sends a letter to
Speaker 7: try and scam someone.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 7: The thing about scamming is you do it because you
Speaker 7: think it's easy. It's about getting stuff easily without having
Speaker 7: to work for it.
Speaker 2: This is a lot of work, Alex says. Scams aren't
Speaker 2: tailored to one person like the letter is. They're more
Speaker 2: one size fits all.
Speaker 7: Someone gets a big list of people and they email
Speaker 7: them all at once, trying to get as many people
Speaker 7: as possible. So that you can catch a couple gullible people.
Speaker 7: I've never heard of anybody saying like, I'm going to
Speaker 7: find someone and say, not only did we have almost
Speaker 7: exactly the same name, but we were best friends. A
Speaker 7: scam would be to try and create loose ties rather
Speaker 7: than tight ties. What if she just wants to reconnect
Speaker 7: what happened to you that made you so paranoid? Like this,
Speaker 7: what happened to you?
Speaker 2: After speaking with Alex, I deliver my report to Sarah.
Speaker 2: The letter is not a scam, but this presents a
Speaker 2: new problem, one that might be more troubling. If the
Speaker 2: other Sarah is real, then Sarah has completely forgotten her
Speaker 2: best friend. How can a person forget a whole best friend?
Speaker 2: It turns out that for Sarah, a forgotten friend is
Speaker 2: just the tip of the iceberg.
Speaker 5: I don't remember a whole lot from my life from
Speaker 5: that period of time, and part of the reason is
Speaker 5: just like I had a really difficult childhood, like when
Speaker 5: my mom and my dad separated, just a lot of
Speaker 5: weird stuff that happen.
Speaker 2: And how old were you?
Speaker 5: I was eight, and so like, huh.
Speaker 2: Sarah says she was thrust into the middle of their fights,
Speaker 2: forced to listen to each parent bad mouth the other.
Speaker 2: Things grew so bad that her mom and dad refused
Speaker 2: to go to each other's homes to pick up Sarah. Instead,
Speaker 2: they exchanged her in a McDonald's parking lot. Sarah has
Speaker 2: some memories from that time, but they're patchy and full
Speaker 2: of gaps.
Speaker 5: My mom and I at one point, like lived in
Speaker 5: a homeless shelter because like she was just trying to
Speaker 5: make ends meat as a single mom, and like this
Speaker 5: was her solution to put a roof over our heads.
Speaker 5: And this isn't like rule South Louisiana, so it's not
Speaker 5: like there are a ton of resources for families that
Speaker 5: live on the edge.
Speaker 2: Sarah has memories of her and her mom sleeping in
Speaker 2: the same bed. She remembers playing board games and eating
Speaker 2: in the communal kitchen.
Speaker 5: You know, Cajun culture is all about like food, right,
Speaker 5: so like we cook everything from scratch, Like it would
Speaker 5: be blasphemy for you to cook dinner for your face
Speaker 5: and for it to be hamburger helper, okay, And I
Speaker 5: remember in the homeless shelter it was the first time
Speaker 5: I ever ate hamburger helper and it was delicious.
Speaker 2: Life with her dad wasn't any more stable. Sarah's father
Speaker 2: remarried quickly, and with his new wife operated a joint
Speaker 2: grocery store and bar, which they named The Lonesome Dove.
Speaker 2: There was a lot of hard drinking and a lot
Speaker 2: of late nights.
Speaker 5: I would spend the night on the counter of the
Speaker 5: grocery store, like with a sleeping bag, and that's where
Speaker 5: I would sleep while they worked in the bar until
Speaker 5: late at night. It sounds depressing when I say it,
Speaker 5: but like I really liked it because like I could
Speaker 5: eat all the candy I wanted from the store, and
Speaker 5: like I could stay up late and watch like David
Speaker 5: Letterman on TV. What happens often is like I'll tell
Speaker 5: my therapist some anecdote like this, and then she kind
Speaker 5: of looks at me, and I think, oh, yeah, that's
Speaker 5: like that's sad stuff like that stuff that a normal
Speaker 5: person would probably be like, that's effed up, yeah, because
Speaker 5: you know, like it was pretty messed up, like some
Speaker 5: of the stuff I went through as a.
Speaker 2: Kid, and that stuff, painful stuff is being dredged up.
Speaker 2: Since reading the letters, Sarah's begun remembering all the time
Speaker 2: she got sick.
Speaker 5: I guess I puked a lot when I lived with
Speaker 5: my dad and my step mom, and I remember that
Speaker 5: it felt like I was a burden whenever I was sick.
Speaker 5: Thinking about my hesitations around like you know, breaking the
Speaker 5: seal on this part of my life, it brings up
Speaker 5: a lot of stuff that like I haven't processed.
Speaker 2: Listening to Sarah speak, I realize that maybe it isn't
Speaker 2: so much a fear of being scammed that's kept her
Speaker 2: from responding to the other Sarah. It's a fear of
Speaker 2: opening a door to the past. For the most part,
Speaker 2: Sarah says, the past is something she pretends doesn't exist.
Speaker 5: It sounds so ridiculous because like, the past does exist,
Speaker 5: But like I can live in a world where, like
Speaker 5: I don't have to deal with the implications of what
Speaker 5: has happened in the past. And maybe that's the way
Speaker 5: I should do it, because it's gotten me through to
Speaker 5: this point in my thirties. Like I'm doing okay.
Speaker 2: Sarah's a college graduate, a homeowner, with a job she
Speaker 2: loves at a video game company, and a husband she's
Speaker 2: been married to for eleven years. She is doing okay.
Speaker 2: Yet all the while, the letter, which has now been
Speaker 2: sitting on Sarah's desk for about a year, still calls
Speaker 2: to her. What does the other Sarah know about her
Speaker 2: life that she herself doesn't.
Speaker 8: Clearly, I don't want her to be hurt.
Speaker 2: This is Sarah's husband, Chris.
Speaker 8: You know, obviously, I'm worried that just wandering into this
Speaker 8: it might bring up a whole lot of other things
Speaker 8: about the tough parts of Sarah's past. But I think
Speaker 8: it'd be fun to just learn more about the good
Speaker 8: times that Sarah had as a kid. And if I
Speaker 8: could learn more about Sarah's rollerblading days, that would make
Speaker 8: me very happy.
Speaker 2: So Chris hatches a plan.
Speaker 5: He's like, you know, we could just drive down there
Speaker 5: and look at where she lives and see if it
Speaker 5: feels safe.
Speaker 2: Together, they punched the return address on the envelope into
Speaker 2: Google street View. The house that pops up on the
Speaker 2: screen looks uninhabited, its windows dark, it's front steps missing
Speaker 2: the exterior peeling. It looks like a haunted house, which
Speaker 2: for Sarah is disconcerting, but it doesn't dissuade Chris. He
Speaker 2: still wants to make the trip, though he does admit
Speaker 2: there is a little something else motivating him.
Speaker 8: I would love an excuse to go fill my cooler
Speaker 8: up with Blu Dan sausage from my favorite sausage maker
Speaker 8: down there.
Speaker 2: And so early one morning in late February, Sarah and
Speaker 2: Chris load their dogs, Bowser and Noki into the car
Speaker 2: for the three and a half hour drive to Abbeville.
Speaker 5: Noki, that's not where you go. He's in the front
Speaker 5: seat like he's gonna drive the car.
Speaker 2: Their first stop, of course, is for sausage.
Speaker 5: How many pounds could I buy?
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get along.
Speaker 2: Sarah also wants to share with Chris some of our
Speaker 2: old hans, so they stop by the Lonesome Dove. The
Speaker 2: woman who works there, now, let Sarah have a look around.
Speaker 5: I don't remember being the ceiling being this slow, but
Speaker 5: I was small.
Speaker 7: I'm about to say, okay, you're my but you might
Speaker 7: be a little taller now.
Speaker 2: Sarah buys some candy and orders a hamburger.
Speaker 3: Seem could not order one.
Speaker 2: Later, Sarah tells me it taste it just like the
Speaker 2: burgers her stepmom used to make when she worked there.
Speaker 2: Sarah and Chris also drive by her old school, Moe Elementary.
Speaker 8: There is a sign that says they are currently raising
Speaker 8: money by cooking gumbo.
Speaker 2: Gumbo for mo. They park, turn off the engine, and
Speaker 2: for a while they just sit there.
Speaker 8: Just seeing this school bring back any memories of her. No, No,
Speaker 8: next stop is the man Attraction.
Speaker 5: We're gonna go draw by Sarah's house.
Speaker 2: Seed.
Speaker 8: Look, it is abandoned. Nobody lives in that house.
Speaker 2: But then as they make their way closer, Oh.
Speaker 5: Wait, there's a house. I'm the abandon house, Chris.
Speaker 2: The destination is on your left.
Speaker 5: They live in that house. That's what's going on here.
Speaker 3: Holy shit.
Speaker 2: What Sarah and Chris couldn't see on Google street View
Speaker 2: was the house behind the house, which has a nice
Speaker 2: yard and a car in the driveway. It's full of life.
Speaker 5: They have kids, Look, kids bikes.
Speaker 2: Wow, it looks so well taken care of. It feels safe.
Speaker 2: When Sarah gets home, she drafts a letter. She handwrites
Speaker 2: it on a sheet of lined paper, just like the
Speaker 2: other Sarah did. At the bottom, she signs it the
Speaker 2: same way the other Sarah signed her letter with her
Speaker 2: name with their name, Sarah Abear. About a week later,
Speaker 2: Sarah receives a text message back. It's a long run
Speaker 2: on sentence like the sender was so excited she couldn't
Speaker 2: be bothered with punctuation. Hey Sarah, this is Sarah. The
Speaker 2: text reads, I would love to catch up. Just text
Speaker 2: me as soon as you can and we'll see to
Speaker 2: it that we can sit down and catch up. I
Speaker 2: cannot wait, and so a date is set. Sarah bess
Speaker 2: Abar and Sarah beth Abar will finally meet the following Friday.
Speaker 2: But when the day arrives, Sarah receives a text from
Speaker 2: the other Sarah about a plumbing emergency. The other Sarah
Speaker 2: has to reschedule, so a new data is set, but
Speaker 2: yet again, the other Sarah is a no show. After that,
Speaker 2: she stops answering Sarah altogether. Sarah sends more texts. Months
Speaker 2: go by and still no response. The situation between the
Speaker 2: two Sarahs has reversed, with Sarah another one left waiting.
Speaker 2: Has she somehow offended the other Sarah? Is the other
Speaker 2: Sarah ignored her? Maybe she lost her phone and just
Speaker 2: isn't receiving her text. So once again, Sarah puts pen
Speaker 2: to paper and mails a second letter, but still nothing.
Speaker 5: You know, initially when we started talking, I was like.
Speaker 2: Is this a scam?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: Scam thing?
Speaker 5: And talking to Chris about like kind of how long
Speaker 5: this has been going on. He's like, I'm starting to
Speaker 5: feel like maybe there's something weird.
Speaker 2: I'm also finding it weird. Two months ago, the other
Speaker 2: Sarah had been so excited to finally connect. So what happened?
Speaker 3: Hi?
Speaker 2: Hi, Happy New Year, New Year. It's January twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: At this point, almost a year since Sarah first told
Speaker 2: me the story of the letter we catch up, So
Speaker 2: let's just recap here. You've moved since we last spoke.
Speaker 5: I live in Los Angeles now. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Last summer, Sarah has offered her dream job at her
Speaker 2: favorite video game company, so in August, she packed up
Speaker 2: her belongings, rented a U haul, and hitched her little
Speaker 2: smart car to the back of it like a little caboose. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Sarah says moving to California is something she's always dreamed
Speaker 2: of doing. There are more exciting things happening in the
Speaker 2: gaming world in LA than in Louisiana.
Speaker 5: The job stuff has been amazing. But and the process
Speaker 5: of moving out here, Chris and I decided to get divorced.
Speaker 2: Oh geez, I'm so sorry. Sarah says that Chris's whole
Speaker 2: world is in Louisiana. In the same month Sarah was
Speaker 2: to move to la Chris was starting a grad school
Speaker 2: program in southern studies.
Speaker 5: He's got a really great career in life trajectory back home,
Speaker 5: and I want him to be able to do that too.
Speaker 1: Boy.
Speaker 2: I'm I'm sorry, and I have to say I'm surprised.
Speaker 5: I mean, there's a certain point in marriage where you realize,
Speaker 5: like you really love someone, but you want them to
Speaker 5: be really happy. And I think that's been at the
Speaker 5: core of what our relationship has been. And I don't
Speaker 5: want him to be alone right like, and I don't
Speaker 5: think I'm coming back.
Speaker 2: Sarah is talking to me over video from her new
Speaker 2: living room. There were palm trees right outside her windows,
Speaker 2: and the California sun is streaming in. There's a lot
Speaker 2: of change, it is, yeah, and yet on the other
Speaker 2: sarah Aber front, nothing has changed.
Speaker 5: I know.
Speaker 2: It's been ten months without a word from the other Sarah.
Speaker 2: But since moving across the country, Sarah's been thinking increasingly
Speaker 2: about home and with it, she thinks about her mysterious
Speaker 2: best friend, if she ever really was her best friend.
Speaker 2: Since the other Sarah won't answer her, Sarah's considering the
Speaker 2: idea of asking her family if they remember the little
Speaker 2: girl named Sarah Beth Abear. Specifically, she wants to ask
Speaker 2: her dad. They talk on the phone each week, but
Speaker 2: each week comes and goes without Sarah ever bringing it up,
Speaker 2: because why.
Speaker 5: That part of my childhood? Like, who's really hard for me?
Speaker 5: And I'd like, I don't think my dad ever realized it.
Speaker 2: Maybe he didn't. It had hurt to know for sure.
Speaker 2: But one Friday morning, Sarah puts her fear aside and
Speaker 2: she and I phone up Her father, Richard, is a
Speaker 2: retired mechanic known in his neighborhood as the guy who
Speaker 2: will fix anything lawnmower's chainsaws. At two o'clock each day,
Speaker 2: his buddies come by the garage hang out.
Speaker 5: Are the guys gonna come over or no.
Speaker 6: Shit, Yeah, they'll be here. We'll drink beer till about five.
Speaker 2: With beer a clock looming, Sarah gets right to it.
Speaker 2: She tells her father the story of the mysterious letter.
Speaker 5: So do you remember anyone from when I was a
Speaker 5: kid who was also named Sarah Aberty?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 5: Not really, So this is the kicker, dad. Her name
Speaker 5: is Sarah Beth t Aber.
Speaker 4: Come on, it's.
Speaker 5: Kind of weird right. At one point I mailed Sarah
Speaker 5: letter back, and when I went to the post office
Speaker 5: and I dropped the letter off, the lady was like,
Speaker 5: why are you mailing a letter to yourself?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Sarah offers details from the letter in the hopes it'll
Speaker 2: spark something for her father, but nothing rings a bell.
Speaker 4: Disco got a good memory for neither one year you
Speaker 4: remembers her at all.
Speaker 2: Do you think it's surprising Richard that Sarah just doesn't remember?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 6: It doesn't surprise me because that era, at that time.
Speaker 6: You know, maybe there's sometimes back then she didn't want
Speaker 6: to remember.
Speaker 2: Is that the case for you? Are the things that
Speaker 2: you just that you just would prefer not to remember?
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: Richard might not remember the other Sarah. But to Sarah's
Speaker 2: fear that her father never realized her pain, it seems
Speaker 2: like maybe he did.
Speaker 6: We would going to a lot of turmoil back then,
Speaker 6: and then if I felt it, I'm pretty sure she.
Speaker 4: Did too, because she was old enough.
Speaker 6: Divorces and stuff like that with kids is not easy. Yeah,
Speaker 6: people get angry, People do things that you wouldn't think
Speaker 6: they do.
Speaker 4: Your grandma was she was hateful.
Speaker 5: Yeah, My grandma, Jonathan, Like, really, I think she had
Speaker 5: a middle breakdown after my it's got divorced.
Speaker 2: This was your mom's mom.
Speaker 5: Yeah, she really went off the deep end.
Speaker 6: I remember the time she pulled a gun on me.
Speaker 6: You remember that, sir, I do. I was going to
Speaker 6: pick you up at her house. She was just mad, Yeah,
Speaker 6: because we were in her yard, gotcha, and she drove
Speaker 6: up behind me.
Speaker 4: And I couldn't get out.
Speaker 6: That's when she pulled a gun and we ended up
Speaker 6: running over on some of her bushes so we could
Speaker 6: get out.
Speaker 4: You end up calling the cops that day too.
Speaker 5: She was so frequently doing crazy stuff like this, Jonathan,
Speaker 5: that like the I guess, like the sheriff, do you remember, Yeah,
Speaker 5: he would watch for me to walk from the school
Speaker 5: to mom's house because he was worried that she would
Speaker 5: show up.
Speaker 4: Those downards, Jonathan, you don't want to remember.
Speaker 2: In fact, it seems like no one is Sarah's family
Speaker 2: wants to remember those times. In the weeks after talking
Speaker 2: to her father, Sarah speaks with her mother, and she
Speaker 2: speaks with her older sister, all in an attempt to
Speaker 2: see if anyone remembers the other Sarah. But no one does.
Speaker 2: Who was this little girl collectively forgotten? At this point,
Speaker 2: the only person who can answer that question is the
Speaker 2: other Sarah herself.
Speaker 5: I really want to meet her, Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 5: just kind of feel like whatever needs to happen to
Speaker 5: actually make it happen would be really great.
Speaker 2: And so Sarah sends out one last text. I'm not
Speaker 2: hopeful it'll change anything, so I'm shocked when the very
Speaker 2: next day, after nearly a year of nothing, the other
Speaker 2: Sarah texts back, I'd love to talk to you. I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: it was a crazy year. The Other Sarah says that
Speaker 2: since Friday's your day off, it's the best day to talk,
Speaker 2: so once again, a plan is made for Friday. It's
Speaker 2: now been nearly two years since Sarah first received the
Speaker 2: Other Sarah's letter, Sarah, Hey, Hi, how are you, and
Speaker 2: the two Sarah's finally meet.
Speaker 3: I was so nervous, so nervous. I was like, I'm excited,
Speaker 3: but I'm nervous. I was like, it feels like a
Speaker 3: firstday school is starting a new job or something. I
Speaker 3: was like, oh my god, I'm so nervous.
Speaker 2: The Other Sarah is apologetic that it took them so
Speaker 2: long to finally connect. But true to her last text,
Speaker 2: the other Sarah really did have a crazy year.
Speaker 3: We've had a lot of issues this year. My kids
Speaker 3: that actually passed.
Speaker 5: Away this year, So I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1: It's difficult.
Speaker 3: I mean, me and him weren't together, but it's hard
Speaker 3: for them, so it's kind of hard to watch them
Speaker 3: go through it.
Speaker 1: It's really really sucks. Yeah, I bet.
Speaker 5: Oh my goodness, I'm so sorry to hear that.
Speaker 2: The other Sarah is raising three kids. Her youngest is
Speaker 2: only a baby, and for the past year or so
Speaker 2: she's been doing it on her own.
Speaker 1: I'm engaged, but he.
Speaker 3: Got in some trouble a while back, so he's finishing
Speaker 3: his time in jail.
Speaker 1: So he gets out in June.
Speaker 5: So will you guys get married when he gets out.
Speaker 1: Yes, we do plan on getting this.
Speaker 5: It's so romantic.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
Speaker 5: I think it's very sweet.
Speaker 1: Yes. And you, what do you do?
Speaker 4: How are you?
Speaker 1: Do you have any kids?
Speaker 5: I don't have any kids. No, my husband and I
Speaker 5: are separated, which is a fairly new.
Speaker 2: Sarah tells the other Sarah about her own crazy year,
Speaker 2: her divorce, her recent move, her new job. The conversation
Speaker 2: feels like the kind between old friends easy and familiar.
Speaker 2: I'm wondering, do you guys recognize each other?
Speaker 1: I recognize her, I don't you don't?
Speaker 5: I feel so bad, Sarah. No, Like when I got
Speaker 5: your letter, it was like, I don't remember much of
Speaker 5: this at all.
Speaker 2: Sarah tells the other Sarah about her life back then,
Speaker 2: her parents fighting her homelessness. The other Sarah says she
Speaker 2: had no idea what Sarah was going through.
Speaker 5: Oh, and so like when you sent me that letter,
Speaker 5: I had this moment of like, I really want to
Speaker 5: meet this person so that I can like remember this
Speaker 5: part of my childhood that I totally don't remember at all.
Speaker 2: And so the other Sarah tries to evoke that childhood.
Speaker 2: You can feel the other Sarah trying to drag Sarah
Speaker 2: from the fog of lost memory. She describes who Sarah was, artsy, creative,
Speaker 2: a bandkit She.
Speaker 3: Was quiet, but when me and her got together, we
Speaker 3: had a blast. Like it was just us cutting up,
Speaker 3: having fun, goofy girls.
Speaker 2: The other Sarah tells Sarah stories like the famous rollerblading
Speaker 2: kitchen incident.
Speaker 3: I got in so much trouble that day, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: She tells her about the sleepovers they had.
Speaker 3: You had stuffed animals and stuff all around your room.
Speaker 2: She reminds Sarah of the little loft space inside a
Speaker 2: guesthouse on her dad Richard's property, where they'd spend the
Speaker 2: night together to get away from everybody. She says, like
Speaker 2: it was just the two of them in the whole world.
Speaker 2: As the other Sarah talks, it becomes clear that while
Speaker 2: Sarah has been stuck for the last twenty years with
Speaker 2: all the sad memories she doesn't want, the other Sarah's
Speaker 2: been holding on to all the happy ones Sarah doesn't have.
Speaker 2: For instance, in Sarah's recollection of those late nights at
Speaker 2: the bar, it was just the hum of David Letterman
Speaker 2: keeping her company. But the other Sarah reminds me Sarah
Speaker 2: that she'd been there to keep her company too, Like
Speaker 2: on the night they put on a show for the
Speaker 2: bar patrons.
Speaker 3: Me and you actually went behind the counter and we
Speaker 3: were making little puppets out of paper bags, and we
Speaker 3: were we were putting on a puppet show for everybody
Speaker 3: in there.
Speaker 1: It was pretty cool.
Speaker 5: That's amazing. It makes me so happy. I'm sorry, just
Speaker 5: keep like bursting.
Speaker 2: Into tears as the stories pile up, stories that span
Speaker 2: locations and rites of passage. Sarah has a realization.
Speaker 5: We were friends for years, like a long time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we were friends for like four or five years.
Speaker 2: The other Sarah says they met when they were eight
Speaker 2: years old. She isn't sure how they met, but she
Speaker 2: thinks it was because her grandmother had owned the Lonesome
Speaker 2: Dove before Sarah's dad and stepmom did, back when it
Speaker 2: was called the Red Dog. From then on, the two
Speaker 2: Sarah's were inseparable, so inseparable in fact, that they're f
Speaker 2: families had to devise a way to differentiate between them.
Speaker 2: So they broke the name Sarah into two parts and
Speaker 2: gave each girl a half Sah and Rah.
Speaker 1: They used to call Sarah Rah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, my family calls me that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So that's why they would call me Sah and her Rah.
Speaker 2: To distinguish you between.
Speaker 1: Between the two. Yeah, when it was me and her together, yep.
Speaker 2: Wow wow. And so, given their closeness and the span
Speaker 2: of years, the other Sarah has always wondered one thing,
Speaker 2: why did Sarah stop being her friend?
Speaker 1: It sucks whenever you like, I get I don't. It's
Speaker 1: hard to explain.
Speaker 3: I don't know what happened, you know, I don't know
Speaker 3: if y'all moved, so something happened or you know, And
Speaker 3: I know you can't remember, and I'm not expecting you
Speaker 3: to or anything, but it seemed like you almost dropped,
Speaker 3: like seriously dropped off the base of the earth.
Speaker 2: Although of course Sarah doesn't remember why the friendship ended,
Speaker 2: here's a theory. In her early teens, Sarah learned about
Speaker 2: a Louisiana boarding school for the gifted and talented. It
Speaker 2: was two and a half hours from Abbeville, and Sarah
Speaker 2: saw it as a chance to get away from the
Speaker 2: turmoil of home. Getting into the school felt like a
Speaker 2: long shot, but she studied hard and she did get in.
Speaker 2: It was at that school that Sarah met a computer
Speaker 2: science teacher who encouraged her to pursue coding. Sarah says
Speaker 2: that if not for that boarding school, she might never
Speaker 2: have tried to get into college, and college changed her life.
Speaker 2: She studied digital media, which put her on the path
Speaker 2: to video gaming and eventually to her new life in
Speaker 2: La So, taken together the boarding school, college, it all meant,
Speaker 2: if not falling off the face of the earth, at
Speaker 2: least falling off the face of Abbeville, which left the
Speaker 2: other Sarah with nothing but a memory of the last
Speaker 2: night they spent together at the other Sarah's house.
Speaker 3: She ended up getting sick that night, and like, instead
Speaker 3: of waking my parents up to call her mom or anything,
Speaker 3: I like helped take care of her all night until morning.
Speaker 1: And then I went and.
Speaker 3: Woke my parents up and was like, hey, Sarah's been
Speaker 3: getting sick all night. And my mom was like, I
Speaker 3: can't believe you stayed up all night taking care of you.
Speaker 3: Should have woke us up. I was like, no, no,
Speaker 3: she's my friend. I want to take care of her.
Speaker 5: I don't remember that, but I got sick a lot
Speaker 5: as a kid doing exactly that. I would throw up
Speaker 5: all night long and my parents used to be so
Speaker 5: mad at me about it. Thank you for taking care
Speaker 5: of me?
Speaker 1: Well, of course, I mean you were my best friend.
Speaker 1: You were like it was me and you.
Speaker 2: Sarah had been scared of reconnecting with the other Sarah
Speaker 2: because of what she might learn, But what she's learning
Speaker 2: is that she wasn't alone.
Speaker 3: I'm so sorry didn't know that that she went through
Speaker 3: so much. And I wish, I wish, I wish we
Speaker 3: weren't so young, and I wish I would have known,
Speaker 3: so I could have helped or you know, done something,
Speaker 3: even though when we were kids.
Speaker 5: It sounds like he did.
Speaker 2: Listening to the conversation, hearing Sarah flooded with emotion, It's
Speaker 2: clear what she's getting from the reunion, but I can't
Speaker 2: help wondering what the other Sarah's getting. She wrote her
Speaker 2: letter hoping to reconnect with an old friend, but since
Speaker 2: sending it, she's learned the time they spend together, the
Speaker 2: bond they shared that she herself, have all been erased.
Speaker 2: So what if anything did Sarah's let her do for
Speaker 2: the other Sarah, especially seeing as how it reached her
Speaker 2: a year late.
Speaker 3: Actually, it came at the perfect timing because it came
Speaker 3: actually a week after I got out of rehab, and
Speaker 3: it was my light at.
Speaker 1: The end of the time.
Speaker 3: No, and when I'm home and I got the letter
Speaker 3: from Sarah, it just it showed me that good things
Speaker 3: can happen. I actually cried when I got her letter
Speaker 3: because I was just so excited. You don't know, I'm
Speaker 3: so glad that you wrote me back.
Speaker 5: I'm so excited for you that you went to rehab.
Speaker 3: Congratulations, I actually make I make one year sober on
Speaker 3: February eleventh, and I am super excited.
Speaker 1: I am so grateful. Everything in my.
Speaker 3: Life has changed, and your letter was the start of many,
Speaker 3: many good things. Like for Christmas, my son wrote me
Speaker 3: a little Christmas card and it said thank you, Mom
Speaker 3: for the greatest.
Speaker 1: Year of my life. And that meant more to me.
Speaker 3: Than any Christmas present or anything else that I could
Speaker 3: ever give them. I don't want to get off the phone,
Speaker 3: but I know I had to go run and get some.
Speaker 1: Stuff taken care of.
Speaker 3: But I mean, I'm all for doing this again, most definitely,
Speaker 3: and no matter what, as long as we can build
Speaker 3: our friendship from here, even if you don't remember the past,
Speaker 3: that would even be amazing. I mean, I don't want
Speaker 3: to lose my best friend again.
Speaker 5: Same here.
Speaker 1: I'll text you so we can hang out again, most definitely. Bye.
Speaker 2: The other Sarah's scream goes black.
Speaker 5: I think what I thought would happen in this call
Speaker 5: was like something with like click in my brain and
Speaker 5: I suddenly remember like everything, But I don't.
Speaker 2: A key that suddenly unlocks the past. That's how it
Speaker 2: works in the movies, but it isn't how the brain
Speaker 2: works in real life. You don't talk to someone from
Speaker 2: your past and suddenly recover memories. You can't recover what
Speaker 2: you never clocked in the first place. There are studies
Speaker 2: that show that when people are confronted with an immediate
Speaker 2: threat to their safety, they're focused on the danger impairs
Speaker 2: their ability to recall other peripheral details.
Speaker 5: My therapist I was just asking her about like the
Speaker 5: nature of memory, and like, why wouldn't I remember something good?
Speaker 5: And she was like, your memory is like a camera,
Speaker 5: so it only captures like what you're focused on at
Speaker 5: a time. And she was like, if you were just
Speaker 5: focused on, like let me survive and cope in this scenario,
Speaker 5: your camera probably just wasn't pointed at Sarah.
Speaker 2: The two Sarah's met when they were around eight, the
Speaker 2: age when Sarah's folks split up and Sarah's life grew
Speaker 2: increasingly hard. Sarah's camera was focused on the immediate threats.
Speaker 2: The other Sarah remained out of frame. What is the
Speaker 2: value of happy memories if you don't remember them? After
Speaker 2: the conversation with the other Sarah, this is the question
Speaker 2: that Sarah has left to grapple with.
Speaker 5: You know, hearing I had a friend that was like
Speaker 5: willing to take care of me all night long while
Speaker 5: I like pewed my guts out. That's like amazing, you know,
Speaker 5: that's like real friendship. I don't know if I have
Speaker 5: adult friends in my life now, who would do.
Speaker 2: That to which Just before Sarah set out for La
Speaker 2: Chris told her he wasn't going to make the trip
Speaker 2: with her as planned, which Sarah says totally made sense
Speaker 2: given the breakup, but it left her alone. None of
Speaker 2: her family or friends offered to step up.
Speaker 5: But if that had happened to someone in my family
Speaker 5: or someone that I really cared about, I probably would
Speaker 5: have been the first person's step and say you don't
Speaker 5: need to do this alone. But I would really like
Speaker 5: that in any of my relationships, whether that's like with
Speaker 5: my family or with someone I'm intimate with or friendship.
Speaker 9: I don't know.
Speaker 5: I feel like for a lot of my life, I
Speaker 5: have wanted the people who are important to me to
Speaker 5: show me the investment and the love that is part
Speaker 5: of that relationship. And I've spent a lot of my
Speaker 5: life not getting that from like my parents are my
Speaker 5: stepmom right, And it's like, maybe I did have that person.
Speaker 5: Maybe Sarah was that person.
Speaker 2: Sarah says she's learning to love her new life in
Speaker 2: La but still misses Louisiana. She's planning to visit soon,
Speaker 2: and when she does, she says she wants to see Sarah.
Speaker 2: She's hoping this time they can meet in person, not
Speaker 2: to uncover lost happy memories, but to make new ones.
Speaker 9: Now that the fern Urest turned into its goodwill home,
Speaker 9: now that the last month's rent is skiing with the
Speaker 9: damage to poss take this moment to dissolve.
Speaker 5: If we met him, if we tried, we felt around.
Speaker 7: For far too from things that acts.
Speaker 2: This episode of Heavyweight was produced by supervising producer Stevie Lane,
Speaker 2: along with Moheeny mcgowker and me Jonathan Goldstein. Our senior
Speaker 2: producer is Khalila Holt. Production help from Domiano Marquetti. Special
Speaker 2: thanks to Emily Condon, Alex Bloomberg, mime O'Donnell, Sonia Dosani,
Speaker 2: Rosie Garren, and Jackie Cohen. Thank you also to Professor
Speaker 2: George Bonano, author of the book The End of Trauma.
Speaker 2: Bobby Lord mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellows,
Speaker 2: John K. Samson, and Bobby Lord. Additional music credits can
Speaker 2: be found on our website. Gimletmedia dot com slash Heavyweight.
Speaker 2: Our theme song is by The Weaker Thans courtesy of
Speaker 2: Epidaph Records. Follow us on Twitter at heavyweight or email
Speaker 2: us at Heavyweight at gimletmedia dot com. We'll be back
Speaker 2: with a new episode next week. Oh