Letters to a Younger Me
Photo by Kate Macate on Unsplash
Dear Younger Me-
Girl. Buckle up. You won't even be able to wrap your head around what I am going to tell you. Do you want the good first, or the bad? You know what, let's go dark first. Get it over with. Deep breath now.
(Channels inner Whoopie Goldberg in Ghost when she holds Demi Moore's gaze and says, "Girl, you in danger”).
Girl. You’re still single.
I know, I know. It’s hard to believe that you’ll arrive in your mid-30s without children, a husband, a dog, homeownership or even a boyfriend. These are the things you had always wanted.
Where did you go wrong, you ask? Are you living in a van down by a river? (No, but Tiny Houses are totally becoming a thing, and, like being single, not something to shame these days. Some really are quite practical.)
“But I’m 26!” you exclaim, “and dating the man of my dreams! I’m the happiest I’ve ever been! I can see the rest of my life so clearly with him and it’s everything I’ve ever wanted. What could go so wrong in the next 10 years that I end up alone still?”
Calm down, calm down.
Here’s the truth. You are going to look around and see lives that look nothing like yours. This will cut you deeply for years. You’ll watch all your college roommates marry years before you. You’ll fall in love with their beautiful blonde babies, one by one. You’ll question why it’s taking you so long; how they got there so much faster.
You’ll wonder - why didn’t anyone pick me? It will cause you to hold on when you should let go - just feel what others feel daily for one moment longer. And there will be times it will make you let go perhaps more quickly than you should; not wanting to waste a moment with the wrong person.
You’ll feel like you’re failing. As if in the race of life you’ve watched the gun go off and others leap ahead, only to find your feet planted firmly at the start line.
You’ll question everything. Doubt yourself. And feel defeat in every bad date and every connection that fizzles whether it was their doing or yours.
But here’s where it gets good. It seems dismal, I realize, but I promise you, the breakup you’ll endure with the man you dated in your 20s – it will be one of the best things that ever happens to you.
This relationship, and more importantly, this breakup, is foundational in your transformation into the person you were created to be.
You see, after you spend a year sobbing and binging Sex in the City on repeat (specifically Season Two when Big breaks Carrie’s heart) the loss of this relationship will be a key factor in motivating you to relocate across the country to Seattle.
You’ll be scared out of your mind at times. You will move completely and utterly on your own. You will never forget the feeling of sitting alone in the window seat as you landed in your new city on a one way flight with no one beside you. But you figure it out. And that, dear me at 26, pushes your finish line back further than you ever thought possible.
This is the part in your story when you really begin to understand what you can control, what you can’t, and most importantly, the difference between the two. You’ll become wiser about what you give your energy to and be more aware of what you allow to happen to you versus what you make happen.
When others deal with relationships ending by diving into another, you dive into experiences. You learn to travel; first with friends and then solo. You fall more in love with each country, drinking in cultures and connecting with incredible humans across the world. You love it so much that you will set an insane goal of standing on all seven continents in seven years. You don’t even have a clue how to get to Antarctica when you decide this.
But you’ll do it.
You’ll relocate to another new state and another big city - again all on your own. You leave pieces of your heart each time you go. You’ll find some friends were a part of your journey for a moment in time – their place existing in a sort of geographical season of time that ends slowly after your bags are packed. But the real ones – they’ll extend beyond state borders, long after you move away and make the effort alongside you to remain friends. And those are the ones who have pieces of your heart in the best way.
You’ll stay best friends with your parents and close to your family, despite moving away. The greatest gift they’ll ever give you was to be your most authentic, unfiltered self because you learned at a young age that their love is both boundless and unconditional. It will give you the confidence to take great leaps in life and allow you to feel whole and loved and wanted, even if your relationship status tugs at you to feel the opposite.
You’ll give your heart in different ways. To children at a local hospital, every Tuesday night for half a decade. You’ll rock and soothe and push IV poles around in endless circles to allow the kids time out of their rooms. You’ll build grocery stores and restaurants with their imaginations and laugh as you’re charged $20 for your hamburger and $9 for fries (by a patient running a high-end burger joint, clearly).
Your gift in life thus far has not been in connecting with any one, single person and starting a family like those around you, but in sharing your light and love in a different way - a way that fits you. You’ll find your heart is so full most days, your life so full of adventure – that the aching and sadness you felt for so long is slowly pushed out to make room for the joy you’re finding.
I don’t know what the distant future looks like. I’m only 10 years ahead of you. But looking back, the most important thing you need to know is that it all works out. There are times when things break and when you’re scared. There are nights the hopelessness takes over and the longing is overwhelming. But you learn to manage all that.
And you won’t just be okay. You will be thriving.
Life doesn’t look exactly like you thought it would, I realize. It will be some time until you get there, but you’ll realize one day that your story is much bigger and more beautiful than you could have ever imagine in your mid-20s.
You just weren’t dreaming big enough yet.
Cheers to the next 10 years.
Love,
Me