Friday's Letters: A Letter to Me

[sometimes I like writing letters to myself and pretending someone else wrote them - someone who is older, and wiser, and knows what to say to make things okay. Someone who can look past all the mercurial thoughts and emotions and make sense of them and make them work for her, instead of against her. If I had someone like that, she would say something like this] 

Dear Emily:

I don't know the right words to say this, to start it off in some poetic fashion that will blow your mind, so I'll just say this: you're only 22. 

I don't know what you're rushing for, and you don't know either, so just stop. Stop panicking over nothing, stop needlessly filling your hours worrying. This all sounds so cliche but just do it. You're only 22, it's okay to not know exactly where your life is going. If there's anything God teaches us it's that He works in unexpected ways, so trust in that. Stop hacking your way through brambles with a hatchet, crying angry tears because you can't make things work the way you want. Maybe there's a reason for that. Maybe you need to accept that. 

It's good to want more. It's good to push, to try harder. You can always be better, but that's not a personal affront to you. It's not supposed to make you miserable. You can't be everything all the time. You can't be the girl in the other office who talks so eloquently, who dresses well every day, who's getting married next year. You aren't her, so stop wishing you are. Stop trying to be other people; you're too old for this game. 

You're too old for that, but too young to feel old. Take some yoga classes or something, shit. Try something different if what you're doing isn't working for you. But stop beating yourself up too. Of all the things not working - that's the biggest. I read a poem once, one that said that there is no expected pace for inner learning. That what we need to learn comes when we need it.

Just remember that. You're only 22.