Advice To My Younger Self

Write the letter, if you must.  All 30 pages of it.  Pour the words from your heart like water from a pitcher.  Get it all out--every last drop--until you've said all you need to say.  Then destroy it.  I don't care how the letter meets its end.  Fire.  Paper shredder.  Teething puppy.  Computer trash can.  Whatever.

Don't you dare send that letter.  If you have a novella of angst and emotion pent up inside, sharing it all with that person isn't likely to change a thing.  It will, however, come back to haunt you like the gamble you took when scarfing down that grey-looking burrito from the gas station that one time.

Keep a journal, a diary, a blog instead, but be prepared to cringe when you look back.  You're constantly growing and changing as a person, gathering life experience and wisdom by the arm-loads.  What you fiercely believe now will probably be only a speck of what you hold to be true 10 or 20 years from now....  Don't be a bit surprised if you don't even recognize the person you used to be a decade or two down the road.

The world is so different now then it was when I was younger and figuring everything out.  I thank God that I was not born to this generation, where every racing, uncensored thought can be shared instantly.  I didn't need the extra help, finding my way in the most awkward way possible.  My younger family members are traveling these well-worn paths.  They are falling fast and hard in love and lashing out for offenses they won't remember when the sun rises tomorrow.  They are baring their souls on page and screen, words that can't be returned or wiped clean.

It's tough, this growing up.  It's hard to look back and know where you would have chosen differently.  It's even worse to have a liftetime witness.

Burn the letter.  You are more incredible--today, yesterday, 10 years ago--than you will ever know.  You don't need the letter to convince him, promise.