30 before 30 :: the letter

Dear 20-Year-Old Kelsey:

Let’s just get this part out of the way: here’s what’s not going to happen in the next ten years.

You’re not going to get married. You’ll believe, deep in your bones, that you’ll marry your college boyfriend. You won’t. That breakup will be painful but will be the first time in this decade that you truly listen to what you want and do something about it. You’ll believe, even deeper in your bones, that you’ll marry a man who made you believe in love at first sight. You won’t. You’ll be buried by the heartache for a while, but will eventually see — and believe in — a world beyond it. 

You’ll be glad you did not rush to fit into a timeline you thought you should follow. You’ll be grateful you did not sacrifice parts of who you are for someone else. These will be the first moments of listening and trusting your gut. There will be more.

You’re not going to have a relationship with your dad. On every birthday, you’ll hold out hope that you’ll hear from him. You won’t. You’ll talk twice in these ten years: before your college graduation, where he’ll promise to take you out for a drink since he won’t attend, and at your grandfather’s funeral, where he’ll finally buy you that drink. His absence will shape you — you’ll talk about it to your mom, your inner circle, your therapist. But it will not define you.

You’ll get to a place where you feel the grief less, where you can release the anger, where you can move toward acceptance of what is. You won’t let go, but you’ll hold it lightly. Be patient; it’s coming.

You’re not going to have it all figured out. You really won’t have anything figured out at any point, really, even when you’re certain you do. You believe that there is a linear path right now — this guides you in almost everything you do. If you do this, then this, then this, then you’ll be there. But then you’ll change your major a few more times, you’ll have your world flipped by travel abroad, you’ll change careers. Uncertainty will always scare you, but it will be less and less as you move through each year. You’ll learn that there’s not really a “figured out” destination that you (or anyone else) arrives at.

None of that will happen for you this decade. But here’s what will.

You will see beautiful places. Rwanda and India and England, the skyline of Chicago and the mountains in Colorado and the beautiful coast in Cannon Beach. You’ll reckon with the privilege you have to get an education abroad and travel for fun and have paid time off. You’ll reflect on what it means to feel at home, what it means to call a place home. You will find your people in all of these places, and find new parts of yourself, too. 

You will date. Or, at least, you’ll go on dates. A man you’ve met once will surprise you at the airport with a cup of coffee and flowers. You’ll donate to a canvasser who stops by your door, and let him take you out for drinks. You’ll meet a man on a dance floor at your favorite bar and stay in touch for seven years. You’ll learn about yourself and more about what you want from every date, every kiss, every human.

You will have life-changing friendships. Life-saving ones. Your dearest friends at 20 will still be yours at 29, and what a miracle that will be — to have a decade of history together. You’ll build new connections along the way, write letters and FaceTime and spend hours over coffee and Thai and wine. They’ll listen to you jabber on about the same old things you’re unwilling to change and love you anyway. They’ll be the safe places you can cry and practice vulnerability. They’ll nudge you, each time, toward the truest version of yourself.

You will grapple with depression and disordered eating, and you won’t tell anyone, though you wonder if you should. You’ll discover the ways you self-sabotage when people try to care for you, and understand how your quirks and deeper-rooted issues show up in your days. You will agonize over what you should do in the world, over who you should be. You will wonder if you should look a different way, if you should have chosen a different path, if you should, should, should. The shoulds will consume you for a long time.

But you’ll get to a place where you can say — and mostly believe — that the ‘shoulds’ you have in your mind are not helpful to you. Or to anyone else. You’ll try, every day, to keep them quiet. It will, every day, be a work in progress.

You’ll sing in so many karaoke bars, you’ll start and stop and start therapy, you’ll think you want to become a pastor. You’ll get emergency surgery in another country, you’ll read poems that make you cry, you’ll get a master’s degree. You’ll call your mom, you’ll kill some plants, you’ll start this blog.

You’ll guard your heart when you should open it, and give your heart to people who don’t deserve it. You’ll sit with people in their deepest pain, and find moments to celebrate with them, too. You’ll change your mind about so many things — tattoos, sex, meat, religion. Socks, capital letters, coffee, technology. You’ll make mistakes. You’ll do many things right.

So much won’t happen this decade that you thought would. And — even better — so much will happen that you can’t even imagine, things you don’t even know to wish for that will come true. You’ll learn that you can try to plan and control all you want, but that there’s really no use. You’ll repeat this to yourself and, slowly, slowly, learn to hold things lightly, to loosen your grip — if only just a bit. 

And, at 29, you’re going to sit down to write a letter to yourself. You’ll pick up your old journals from that year, giggle at your absolute conviction in one entry and your utter confusion in the one the next day. That is your life — both/and, all the time. You’ll look back at this decade and think, “Yes. This was it. This was mine.”

This decade is yours, dear one. Eyes open, heart wide, bold and gentle. Pay attention to it all.

I promise you, you won’t want to miss a thing. 

All the love,
Kelsey

august 17.

I've downloaded Timehop, allowing the alerts to greet me as soon as I unlock my phone. I've enabled Facebook's "On This Day," marking the notifications unread until I've scrolled through each memory. I start most days this way: lying in bed after my alarm goes off, scrolling through memory lane. Last year, I Instagrammed the beautiful waterfalls I hiked past while on retreat for my new job. Three years ago, I tweeted about being one week away from hopping on a plane to India. Seven years ago, my best high school friend wrote on my wall to tell me that she would always always always be my friend.

These snippets of the past are kind of like the songs that bring you back to that one night, that one feeling, that one moment in time. But these snippets are always the good stuff -- they're the songs you danced to at that sleepover, the one that played during that kiss, and the one you belted at karaoke. I see the picture of the waterfall and get the same excited butterflies in my stomach that I had as a three-day-old employee. I see the tweet and physically ache for Bangalore and the feeling of hopping on an international flight with my travel pack. I see the post from my friend and immediately screen shot it to her with a few heart emojis, grateful that her promise is still true. These are such good moments.

But what about the rest?

What about the nitty gritty stuff of our hearts and guts that isn't recorded on social media? What about the just-as-real (and maybe even-more-real) stuff of our lives that was around before social media? Timehop and Facebook leave out the stuff that reminds us of the loneliness or the recent breakup or the friendship drama. They don't play the song that we looped on repeat when we said goodbye for the last time, or the one that we had to avoid for awhile, or the one that has always made us tear up a bit. There aren't many Instagrams or tweets that bring up hard stuff, or under-the-surface stuff. This is, of course, by our own choosing -- we purposefully record and remember the butterflies over the breakups, the excitement over the dread, the "life is great" over the "life is great but also really complicated." But still, we feel the real stuff's absence; it's the missing part of our perfectly crafted and curated scroll down memory lane each day.

I needed to look up a date and a memory for an essay-in-progress in an old journal tonight and found that real stuff staring at me from the pages of my bright orange, tulip-covered journal from the summer of 2005. I flipped through pages and found unsent love letters to multiple boys, printed transcripts of AOL Instant Message conversations with those same boys, and my insights into friendship and relationships and school. I found today's date.

August 17, 2005: "I'm ready for school to start. Pumped. I love rain. Last night we went to bed at 5! Time for me to roll out = now (11:22)!"

I read the full entry, giggling alone in my apartment and wondering why I ever thought I should use the phrase "roll out," even if it was just for my eyes only. I returned the journal to its box and pulled out my bright pink, daisy-covered one from the summer of 2006.

August 17, 2006: "He was like 'Where have you been?' and I said 'around.' He was like 'around, huh?' and I said 'Yeah I've sent you a few texts the past few days' and he goes 'yeah' and some other stuff. He said he'd try to call me sometime. I think it was fate."

First, I laughed. (Fate? Really?) And then I kept searching through the pages, unearthing the multicolored hearts and flipping open the elephant with the balloon and holding the engraved feathers, finding the under-the-surface words and feelings from each August 17, the stuff and stories that my Timehop and Facebook wouldn't bring up each year.

August 17, 2008: "I went to a High School Musical 2 party! It was super fun even though I didn't know everyone there very well!"

August 17, 2012: "I explained that I couldn't let him take me out to dinner because I had just gotten out of a long-term relationship and am going away. In other words, this is how my heart feels: UGGGGGHHHH!!!!!!!!!"

August 17, 2014: "How on earth will I know if this is the right path for me? Don't I just need to take one step and then see how that goes? What if I change my mind? Then I do. Dreams and plans and timelines can change. They always do."

As I read each entry, I moved past the picture-perfect parts and into the "life is great but also really complicated" ones. There wasn't a filter or spellcheck or missing snippets in this memory lane. It was all there, messy handwriting and weird analogies and rambling monologues and all. 

And now, this one's there too.

August 17, 2015: I had already Instagrammed my three closest gals from our 7 am breakfast date today. I took my first coffee art photo and started writing my "I just started drinking coffee" Instagram post in my head. I snapped a few pictures of my students, capturing the silly icebreakers and the birthday celebrations and the sacred conversations. But there is more to this August 17 than these good, post-worthy snippets. There was the walk home from work -- to a home I've been living in for over a year now, to a bed which is finally unlofted after an epic battle with the mattress and frame. There was the writing about Wicked and watching Ross and Rachel and their new baby on Friends and, now, the reliving of so many August 17s. Good and hard, big and little, and under-the-surface pieces that make up this day.

According to Timehop and Facebook, August 17 has not been a special day in the history of my life. Except that it is. Of course it is. Because life -- good, bad, and real -- happened then and is happening now. August 17 was fun in 2008 and heartbreaking in 2012 and insightful in 2014. And now, in 2015, it's an ode to my journaling, or to anyone's journaling, or to creating an outlet to remember the under-the-surface, "life is great but also really complicated" stuff somehow. It's also a reminder that memories exist outside of those that social media reminds us of, that the unseen and undocumented snippets matter just as much -- if not more -- than those that show up on our screens. And it is a plea to my future self, who will see this on August 17, 2016: sit with and learn from and let all the snippets of your life, from August 17 and all the other days, show up beyond your screen.

Let them live in your heart and guts.