04 January
Personal Prompt: Write a letter to your future self.
Dear Future Self,
Congratulations! You made it 🙂 I know right now it is hard to picture I even have a future self (well – a long-time-into-the-future future self), but I guess it is possible. More importantly, I really hope that the sense of despondency and dejection I feel about the future – tainted with fear of every aspect of my life – turns out to be a fruitless waste of my mental energies.
Right now, I’m not good. I’ve been worse! But I’m not good. I scored excellent marks on my depression test today. So I really hope you’ve got that down pat. I hope that the balls I’m setting in motion now pay dividends – the time and money spent with health professionals, with writing blogs and articles, and endlessly reading books and internet sites about my eating disorder. At the end of the day, I am well aware of the fact that talking, reading and writing, don’t equal change. But I hope they are the necessary precursors to change and that you have benefitted from my efforts.
I am painfully aware of the fact that I am not alone in finding 50-ish to be a tumultuous and highly stressful period of my life. My friends are all going through somewhat similar processes. We are all in fact, having nervous breakdowns together. That is both comforting and alarming. It is with cautious optimism however, that I look at those people I know who are over 60 and I see moments of serenity for them. When the tremendous stresses of teenagers and alzheimers and monetary woes are being relegated to “the past”, and they are moving towards experiencing something called leisure. I hope you, my future self, are experiencing leisure. Not laziness. Not rest. Not a holiday. But leisure. Perhaps coupled with a sense of peace and the warmth of love and companionship.
I am also hoping that I am curing you of chronic pain now – that over the course of 2017 solutions are found and improvements are made. I have certainly invested in physical activity over the past few years, something for which I developed a great love and this my friend, should be benefitting you enormously.
The other thing I invested in, was friendships. I culled those that didn’t work out. I kept those that did. We are truly blessed with our circle of love and I hope it remains intact.
Oh – and future self? Can you write me a letter and send it back so I know everything is going to be okay? Thank you!!
Sincerely.
Me
Creative Prompt: Write a letter to someone you admire.
Dear K,
As you can see, I just wrote a letter to my future self. Then I read that I need to write a letter to someone I admire – and you know who popped into my head first and foremost? You! Yes – you my friend!!
Thank you for being at the clinic when I turned up looking all haggard and lost last May. I am sorry that it was necessary for you to be there, but from a purely selfish point of view, I am glad you were. And thank you for being the first person to speak to me! [Well – aside from the staff… But they were paid to talk to me!]
I am grateful for your friendship but more importantly, I am inspired by your progress. And a teency bit green with envy. You have had such overwhelming trauma in your young life [yes – your young life, no matter what you might think!] and for you to make such a dramatic turn around in such a short period of time is nothing short of inspirational.
Now I know you will tell me all the things you get wrong, and all the things that still need fixing, but just for a moment look at yourself from my point of view. You are amazing 😀
So as we journey together on this little road of recovery ups and downs. No matter how far forward, back or sideways you go, I will always be here. And I have absolute trust in you to be there for me. So that is something worth its weight in gold.
I see wonderful things for you in the future – not just in a week or a month, but in a decade. I know you can’t picture yourself in a decade and when you try it scares the bejeezers out of you – but I can see you. And you’re beautiful. And glowing. And it’s all worth it. It’s not perfect – no actual rainbows and unicorns I’m afraid – but it’s real and it’s great.
So chin up – no matter how many times we fall over, we get back up. Things that seemed impossible yesterday have now come true. Things that seem impossible today are just around the corner.
Reach for the stars lovely girl and see how much you grow 🙂
xx
