Letters to a Younger Self

There is a book entitled, What I Know Now, and it's inspired my entry today.

I'm not going to write Dear Self, Hello You, or To Me. That beginning reminds me of retreats where you write letters to yourself for future read. For as much as I loved retreats, I never felt like I benefitted much from writing to my future self. I always seemed to trust myself that whatever I experienced that day, if significant, I'd remember later on.

Now I'm writing to my younger self. The 27! me. That's a bit from my GRE studying - remember factorials? You multiply all the numbers preceding the one with the !

I like the exclamation mark. (!)

So, 27!, here:

I'm tempted to give advice or write regrets. Both futile, I think. Why cajole bittersweet memories? Why regret? I don't respond well to regret.

I'm tempted to give a hearty pat on the back. That's dumb. I know I've done some things well in life. I also know I can be a coward. Let's get real.

Might I just surrender to the nit-grit of what I write best: reflecting on brokenness and the painful lessons learned through just good ol' fashion love.

There are so many things I wish you could have known, especially how to stand up for yourself and also how to stand up to yourself. You were never a prisoner of your emotions, as you once thought. Your feelings just never knew quite how to swim to the top of your tongue so they could escape. They stayed. Sometimes I wonder what you would have done, become, willed yourself to, if you learned that your emotions were simply, and quite exquisitely, symbols of your beauty and depth. Nothing more. Nothing less.

I wish you could have found the right people at a younger age. That was not to come until later. Perhaps it was because you weren't yet able to receive them. Or they were not yet able to receive you. I'm not sure.

I really do wish that you understood that loving doesn't mean it is always returned and that doesn't mean you should stop, but it does mean to be careful. To be more or less cautious would be asking you to step down from who you really are. To ask you not to love the people you did is unthinkable. When you loved, you loved so fiercely, without ever taking a breath. It was like watching an artist paint with their own blood. A painful witnessing of creation. I was thankful when you learned to put the blood away.

You were never afraid of dancing, trotting to the bathroom by yourself, or taking solitude as your only backpack. I actually wish I kept some of that. The backpack is here somewhere.

I don't know if there is anything you could have known that would have helped you. Every heartache yielded to a wider peripheral vision. At 27, I can see a lot. The caves are wide and expansive because of all the chiseling that's been done. There are scars, dried wounds, and smelly corners, but the peripheral is wide.

You always loved your family, Tricia, being alone, and dreaming of what could be.

Maybe I could suggest to keep writing? Stop listening to everyone else. Publishing is not the goal of writing. Writing, your first and only obsession, is necessary.

I wonder where would you be had you known what Adonis had in store for you? Would you have run? Become afraid? Kicked him to the side and fished for another whale? You knew, from age .2, that you were destined for true love, true. And nothing would have stopped you. Nothing did. Not even the ravens of depression intimidated you. They only taught you to fly.

I don't have anything to tell you. You always seemed to trust me and I, in turn, shall do the same.