A letter to me

Dear younger me,

I want to say thank you.

On a regular Saturday night, I opened the box of stuff that you saved for me, and the next couple of hours had an impact on me that I could never have seen coming. As I peeled back the layers of our life, I found things like report cards, handwritten notes, yearbooks, t-shirts, trophies, awards, sketches, and magazines. I call them memories, you call them life. I know they weren't always easy to keep since space was limited and that to many people they have seemed like junk or trash. But without these things, I quite literally wouldn't be here. Some other version of you would be here, doing something totally different with a completely different set of experiences guiding him. I don't want to be someone different. I want to be me. I want to be us.

Thank you not only for the memories, but for the courage it took to make them.

Now, I would like to do something for you. I would like to provide you with some encouragement, some reassurance that everything turns out fine, and maybe an answer or two that won't change the course of our life.

I know that your life is often harder than you deserve it to be. I know that you don't always get the affirmation that you need. And I know that you're often scared without showing it.

The only thing I know to tell you is don't worry. I promise we are okay.

Postscript - not for him, but for you

Growing up, my life wasn't easy. Sometimes I made it harder and sometimes it was made harder for me. Given the chance, I still wouldn't change one thing about how I grew up knowing that it could or would change where I am at today. There are certainly mistakes and bad decisions in my past that have wound up hurting others; and those I would take back in an instant if it meant fixing something in their life.

This is not a list of regrets and it's not a list of complaints. This is a list of things I wish I could have heard when I needed to hear them, not necessarily to have made my life better, but it sure would have been nice for things to have been a little easier.