A letter to myself.

I opened my mailbox and I found this letter. It comes from deep within. A brutally personal space. What would yours say?

We don’t speak as candidly as we should, you and I. We avoid each other in a perpetual dance and I’ve grown tired of hiding from your questions. Hiding from your cries for help.

I’m sorry for the pain that you carry. The burdens that you bear. The weights that were tied to your limbs long ago, when you were still barely a seed. I’m sorry for their words, cold and sharp like knives. I’m sorry you bled for so long. I wanted to protect you but I didn’t possess the strength. I didn’t know how to shield you when my own sword wasn’t battle ready. You never deserved the darkness that always hovered above you, threatening to dim your beautiful light. Your parents should have taken you by the hand and led you through adversity. You shouldn’t have tried to hold your own. Your father should have never told you that you wouldn’t matter. That you weren’t good enough. That you were the paradigm of disappointment. Those kids at school shouldn’t have ridiculed and attacked you every day of your young life. God, that light was so promising. How could no one see it?

I saw it, Matt.

I’m sorry for those moments when you looked in the mirror and told yourself how much you hated what you saw. I heard those insults. Insults you’d absorbed from others. A language that became your inner voice. I was on the other side of that mirror and I kept screaming to you. DON’T GIVE UP. But I watched you lose pieces of yourself, a little more each day. I’ve saved those pieces for you and I’ve been waiting for the right time to show you.

I want to show you, Matt.

I need you to see your potential. That light that I’ve always seen. That character, fierce and bold. Glorious and true. A force of energy that can change this world. A force of energy that’s meant to change this world.

I love you, Matt.

This will seem foreign to you. You will resist my help. But you deserve love. You deserve praise for your talents. You deserve kind words. You deserve a shoulder to lean on when you’re tired of standing.

Go write. Sing. Speak. Create. Be. I will be there when you publish a book or a story. I will be there when you sing at a coffee shop for the first time. I will be there when your words and laughter change someone else’s world forever. I will be there when your sun finally shines through the clouds that have sheltered you for so long.

And I will bask in that light.