A Letter To A Decade Younger Me (CONT'D. FROM PREVIOUS ENTRY)

 Writing Prompt: Reflect over the past 10 years of your life and write the decade younger YOU a letter, as if you were catching up with an old friend.  Include life lessons learned so far that you would share with this younger version of you.

Hey You,

I’m pushing 40 now.   Officially past the age when my Mom had all of us, all my siblings and at 38, I now have finally had a child of my own – my beautiful baby daughter Elyse.   

Elyse & Me.  Age 38 and Age 7+ months. Stearns Wharf, Santa Barbara.  January 2015.

So this means you’re me a decade ago, 28 and pushing 30, full of doubt and the woe-is-me-dom brought on by being the single girl stringing together one disastrous dramatic relationship after the other.  The big three uh-oh looming at you like a death knell to your dating life, a tick-tock to your biological clock, a pressure cooker you’ve submerged yourself in that will make you explode if you don’t (not necessarily in this order…) find a man, have babies, make more money, move up in your career and just do something with your life, dammit.  Something other than being The One Before The One, bearing the brunt of breakup after breakup with yet another guy you were willing to change everything for, just to make him happy.  I’m writing to tell you to STOP.  Stop doing this to yourself.  All these men didn’t make you unhappy.  You are making you unhappy.  You hate yourself.  You disgust you. You’re ashamed and embarrassed and humiliated that you exude confidence in your professional life at work and whimper weakness in your personal life at home.  You think you are tired now and you think this is the worst you have ever felt, you are oh-so-sad and when will your pain end??  I am writing to tell you, unfortunately, because I love you but you have to know.  Your pain hasn’t even started yet.  It has only just begun.

I am writing to tell you also simply that I. Love. You. because you do not love yourself yet.  I can say that to you because ten years later, that’s how long it took to recognize the importance of and cultivate the growth of/foster the environment of self-love.  A twentysomething flees their flaws; a thirtysomething embraces them.  A thirtysomething reaches in and deep and explores internally what a twentysomething is too scared or too unaware or too proud to poke, prod, find, confront and accept.  In my twenties, I reached out.  Literally.  Reached outwards to seek validation or worth or attention.  Reached out to others, toxic friends, self-sabotage with especially men who I would allow to deem my value as a person.  And in truth, in a sense, that’s what your twenties are about: to just go out there, get out there, put yourself out there.  I traveled as much as I could, met as many people as I could and collected as many life experiences as I could.  And so congratulations, yes you did all that. 

10+ Years Ago.  Age 27.  VFest.  Chelmsford, UK Countryside.  August 2004.
On-location globe-trotting for FOX's The Rebel Billionaire: Richard Branson's Quest for the Best.

But here’s a secret, Drama Queen of Broken Hearts: all those men that you were committed to making happy, all the ways you kept changing yourself to please them…you’ll learn to change yourself for yourself in the years ahead, and no one else.  You’ll learn how to be comfortable in your own skin.  You’ll learn how to like being alone and hell, yes unbelievable, you’ll even wish you had more alone time!  And one day, which seems like a forever that will be never to you now, one day you’ll find yourself with a man that doesn’t want you to change at all.  And that for once, he’s the one making sure it’s YOU that is happy.  Hold out for that one.  He makes all those other assholes worth it.  Almost.  Ha.

But I need to write to also tell you the next ten years is not some Oprah spiritual self-help walk in the park journey full of A-HA moments; there are also many UH-OH moments ahead.  There will be many mistakes, and great loss and suffering and extreme ups and downs and milestones and rockbottoms.  There will be disease and unease and marriage and miscarriage and infidelity and near-divorce and birth and death.  You will drop to your knees in pain, in submission and in prayer.  You will stop wondering and believing and hoping altogether.  You will stop writing.  Don’t stop.  I’m writing to you ten years ahead, telling you that you should have NEVER stopped writing.  Pen to paper, all those empty journals, pages that should have been filled of your pain and your joy, your triumph and your tragedy, ALL those experiences were lived, yes.  But they should have also been written in your voice – however fresh and frail, so passionate and poignant, at the time.  Instead of now, ten years later, struggling to recollect like some crunchy crispy handfuls of sepia-colored leaves off a tree after the changing of the foliage has passed and the chill of winter is about to set in.  I’ve chosen ten years later at last to force my mind, my soul, my spirit, my voice, but more importantly my pen/THE WRITER in me to reawaken and return to those vibrant hues and shades and colors of memory, like leaves in the Falltime, when everything was changing and turning over, slightly still the same but also very different.  This writer is no longer hibernating in a winter without words.  So write write WRITE (!!!) and read these lessons I’ve learned and revel in the truth that is your twentysomething self.  Because don’t worry, you end up a pretty bad-ass woman, if I don’t say so myself.  ;)

Love, Me.

10+ Years Ago.  Age 27.  Necker Island, BVIs.  September 2004.
Branson's Private Island in the Caribbean.
On-location globe-trotting for FOX's The Rebel Billionaire: Richard Branson's Quest for the Best.

A decade ago.  Age 28.  Winter 2005.  Lake Tahoe.
All In.  "Chardonnay" gets her nickname.  Texas Hold 'Em.
(Clearly this was a long time ago due to my choice in wine.)

10+ Years Ago.  Age 27.  Necker Island, BVIs.  September 2004.
Branson's "Office:" The Hammock.
On-location globe-trotting for FOX's The Rebel Billionaire: Richard Branson's Quest for the Best.

More Lessons for my Younger Self:

*You are good enough.

*This isn’t rockbottom.  You will hit rockbottom.  And then you will come out on top.

*“Every little thing’s gonna be alright.” -- Bob Marley

*The money will always come from somewhere.

*Most of the people who are your friends now, won’t be your friends much longer.  Like an outdated haircut, or some trendy fashion item, there are just some people you outgrow.

*Stop playing the victim.

*Pray. To Whomever or Whatever, Whenever, Wherever or However.  (Like my favorite Maxwell song.)  Just. Pray.  The power and impact of it all will astonish you.

THOUGHT: What will my 48 year old self write to me today/my current 38 year old self??  Whoa.