The Girl I Put on the Mail
There is something comforting about writing with a fountain pen on paper. It is tactile, definite, and somehow feels more real, like my thoughts are manifesting into reality. Something I can touch, look at, and tear apart.
I used to write tons of letters to my friends when I was a teenager. Computers were still a novelty, and the internet wasn’t yet available for civilian use. Of course, I could call them, but that was quite expensive, especially when calling long-distance for hours. There were no smartphones to distract you, and all the good shows on television aired later in the day, just once a week. So I read, drew, listened to the radio, and wrote. Tons and tons of letters.
The bulk of them I sent to my best friend, whom I first met in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands, on August 30. I was waiting in front of an open-air stage where my favorite band, The Radios, was going to perform. I instantly loved her. There was something magical about our connection that I had never experienced before.
We had a crush on one of the band members, as teenage girls often do. She adored Ronny Mosuse, and I was mesmerized by his brother Robert. And to this young man - poor, poor man - the majority of my letters were sent. I wrote to him so often that he signed my copy of their album with "Thank you for your letters." I notice a slight embarrassment as I write this down. It says something about how frequently I wrote and how often I visited their concerts.
The letters to him became a replacement for my diary. And now I wonder if I wrote to him during the same period when the gaps in my diary appeared. (Also read: The Girl I Locked Away.) I felt like I could tell him everything. All my doubts, insecurities, and the troubles I was dealing with. When I was at their concerts, I felt truly free, able to be myself, and happy. When I wrote to him, I felt safe, a sense of kinship, and when he thanked me for my letters, I felt seen. So I poured my heart out. It may sound silly, but Robert and The Radios were my lifeline in those days. They were my escape. Without them, I really don't know how I would have gotten through all the mess I found myself in.
Staring at the gaps in my childhood diaries, I wonder what I actually wrote to him. Because all I have are memories of feelings. What was really going through my mind? Who was that teenage girl who couldn't open up to her family and peers? That theater kid who didn't mind performing every weekend and training during the week but also felt enormous pressure to always bring her A-game. What was her voice? I guess I will never discover it by reading her own words. And somehow that makes me feel a little sad because I've noticed while reading my diary: she didn’t open up to it either. She trusted all the teenage shenanigans to her diary, but what really mattered to her, she wrote it to him only.
The Radios split up in 1994, their PO box was cancelled. I was 14 by then, and I moved on. I discovered different music, found new friends, and learned to cope. I remember, in the year 2000, when news came to me that Robert Mosuse had passed away at the age of 30 - he was very ill. I read this news in a magazine laying at the coffee table of an advertisement agency where I was an intern. One moment I was enjoying my new life full of hope, excitement and the feeling that I was finally following my heart. The other moment I was thrown back in time, back to my 14 year old self. And I did not expect the amount of loss I felt. I was a young adult, and he was just a silly crush from the past, I thought. And yet, I felt heartbroken. As if the girl I had once put on the mail to him died with him, forever lost.
And now, more than two decades later, I still feel the heartache, the pain, the loneliness—perhaps more intensely than I ever did back then. But there’s something else too. A warmth. A deep sadness for the girl I once sent away, and a quiet joy in reuniting with her. I see now she never truly left. I may have entrusted her voice to you for safekeeping, but her spirit stayed with me all along. That teenage girl is me.
So let me write one more letter—to you, and to the girl I was.
Dear Robert,
My letters to you were my SOS, and you were the angel who answered. Without knowing it, you saved me. You and The Radios offered me pockets of light, spaces where I could breathe, laugh, and be entirely myself. Thank you. Thank you for being you, for sharing your joy, for the memories and the music that still carry me back to a time of hardship and true, unfiltered freedom.
But most of all, thank you for keeping my younger self safe.
I can’t tell you this in person anymore, but I’ve lit a candle for you—and for the girl who once wrote her heart onto every page.
It’s in my heart now, where it glows. Forever.
On the 3rd of July, 2025, Dany Lademacher was reunited with Robert, playing among the stars, forever rocking his guitar. I'm sure they'll write incredible songs together and continue to inspire us for years to come.
