Ponderous Contemplations: Words I’d say to My Younger Self

For the last few months, I’ve been an avid Tweeter.  The thing of it is, I rarely post anything myself.  I’m usually answering someone, retweeting someone’s words of wisdom, or posting Brainy Quotes’ of the day that I loved.  I have seen a question repeatedly in the last few weeks that had me pondering.

“If you could go back and talk to your younger self, what would you say?”

I know I have seen this question at least twice over the course of three weeks.  I thought long and hard before giving my answers.  And we all know that we can’t possibly fit everything we’d like to say to that younger more eager to stretch her wings and fly version of ourselves in the character limitation on Twitter.  The other question I’ve seen that gave me pause and goes along well with this rather philosophical and self-reflective pondering was “What do you most regret not doing?”  Notice that the question doesn’t ask what you regret not achieving.  It doesn’t even say what do you regret failing or never succeeding at.  It distinctly asks about “not doing.”

These are questions that tempt us to delve deep and rummage through the ravages of our battered and beleaguered souls.  It asks something of the writer that most people don’t realize they are asking of us as well.  These questions ask us to pour out a part of ourselves that we haven’t been willing to look at without cringing in a long time.  No one wants to fail.  Everyone wants to do. And absolutely no one wants to admit to defeat even though many of us have given into despair at one point or another in our lives.

I remember despair.  I would always just be, even as I never was.  I would live on the periphery of my dream: reading books, editing other’s books, and wishing I were a writer too.  I can write, I’d think, then I’d move onto something else.  I wasn’t a writer.  Hadn’t everything I’d head and known to date proven that.  Boxes of rejection letters from literary magazines, publishers, and agents proved it.  Professors telling me that my work was melodramatic and would never sale.  What they said had to be right?  Mama said my writing was good, but she loved me, so she was bias.  My friends asked me to write stories for them.  they had to be mad, but writing the stories seemed to make me so happy, so I wrote them.  I learned to live as something else, always something that didn’t quite fit, a garment too itchy and uncomfortable for my sensitive skin, but I kept stepping into that uniform because I just knew it was the one, I belonged in even though it was ill fitting and gave me hives.

I would try something new I told myself.  There are no such things as dreams.  They are for the young and naïve, and there wasn’t another naive bone left under my uncomfortable skin.  So, I studied to become a part of a new profession.  I’d found my calling I thought.  I was ecstatic to belong in a world full of nuances.  I learned all I could about the human condition and still have so much left to learn.  It wasn’t enough.  I loved but did not feel love.  I wanted and somehow the desire felt like flat soda bubbles struggling to create an excellence they just weren’t capable of.  Something was missing, always, missing.  The world was bleak and unkind, my life had little meaning, and I could feel the world closing in on me again, defeat a breath away.  How could this be?  I loved my clients.  I adored my new profession.  I fell to the bottom again and was unsure how to pull myself up.  The dreams all of them were blown away like so much flotsam, and I was left to learn my lesson, again.

When I read the question “What would you tell your younger self?” I answered with, “be kind to yourself and never give up on your dreams.”  The woman that I was just two years ago is no longer defeated.  I learned that being a writer, whether I’m writing for a living or just to write because I love it, was something I had to be.  I loved the little short stories I wrote for friends to make them laugh or tell their story as they wanted it told for them.  I enjoyed writing term papers for my psychology classes.  I loved writing letters to friend and family members via e-mail.  Yes, there was this kind of peace that seeped into me like a tide of tranquility pulsing over me when I wrote anything.  As the world seemed to drown in fear and rage during COVID-19, I sat in front of my computer editing my first completed novel and starting a new one.  All of a sudden, I no longer needed anyone to tell me I was a writer.  Unexpectedly, I was doing what I loved most in the world.  I was reading and writing.  I was and had been, but I would be again.  It was a glorious feeling.

To that younger me, I will say now.  Thank you for being a part of me.  Though you and I are still one, I can put the part of me that doubted as passionately as I loved writing behind us.  We are one, and I am a writer.  I will protect our identity forever.  I will be as I was meant to be.  I will be kind to myself, accept criticism because it is needed to grow, and I will offer compassion and kindness to others like me, as I remember what it is like to have cruel words reverberate like the chiming of silver on crystal through the years to still haunt me.  it is possible to offer constructive critiques without compromising someone’s soul, as mine once was.  Let us go forward, you and I, as one, as the writer we are, and set our little corner of the world ablaze.

CSA