A couple of months ago I joined a writing challenge that was supposed to make me do a different writing task every day for a month. I fell behind on the very first day. A few weeks in I decided that I was going to do it and got to Day 2 before I gave up 'temporarily' (completely). On Day 1 though (not the actual Day 1 - obviously - but the Day 1 task), I wrote what is possibly the most honest piece of writing that I have ever completed. This is it.
A LETTER TO MY 25 YEAR OLD SELF (I'M SORRY)
You’re 25 now and you’ve been working at a temporary job, that was supposed to be for six weeks, for
about four months. Less if you take away the time that it was closed over
Christmas, but it feels like more. It already feels like forever because you
hate it, but you really believe you won’t be there for much longer. You’re
wrong. And I’m sorry that you’re wrong. I’m sorry that you’re going to be there
for eight years while you try and fail at so many different things. And I’m
sorry that when you do finally get out, it’s not going to be the happy ending
you’re envisioning. But know this – you will come to realise that everything
you do is just another step along the path. That nothing is forever, and that
you will at least get to say that you tried.
Know this also – you need to try
more. There are so many things that you’ve done that were not your dream. There
are so many things that you will fail at that are not your dream. It’s going to
take you a long time to realise that what you really need to try at is what you
long to do. To accept that you may fail at it, but that failing is never going
to be as bad as not trying at all. Failing is never going to make you as
unhappy as not trying because failing is not an end. Failing is only an impetus
to try harder. It will take you until now to realise that. But you will.
In about four years’ time you
will meet a man who you think you love. You don’t. He will hurt you. Badly and
repeatedly. And you will give him the means. He will hurt you carelessly. That
will be the worst. The fact that he doesn’t mean to hurt you but won’t care
enough about you to know that he is. And that will be on you. You’ll try to
protect yourself by pretending that you don’t care about him, but it will only
make things worse.
Should you still do it? I don’t
know. I don’t know yet how he will change you because that process is not yet complete.
I don’t know whether what he will make you will help you or harm you because
not enough time has passed. I do know that it’s over now. I can give you that,
at least, because there will be times when you just want it to be over, when
you’ll want to skip ahead to a time when he is out of your life for good, and I
can at least assure you that that time will come. It will. Even when you think
it won’t.
That won’t be the worst. One day
you will meet a man who you could love, who I still believe you could be happy
with. And he will be with someone else. He will feel it too. That connection.
And you will both tell yourselves that you can be friends until the night comes
when you both realise that you can’t be. That night you will connect with
someone in a way you have never connected with anyone else. And you will be the
one to walk away. And it will be the right decision. Know that it will always
be the right decision even though it will hurt you for years to come. Even
though you will cry for years to come and wonder if you will ever feel that way
again. I wish I could tell you that you will. But I don’t know yet.
I wish I could tell you that one day you will be
happy. But I don’t know yet.
