Letter to my 12-Year-Old Self

You will be okay.

I know the world seems upside down right now. Tonight, was rough, quickly packing your bags under the cover of night. What do you bring? Pajamas? Your RC low-rider? Maybe some sunglasses to cover the bruise. You’ve never had to lie to one of your parents and it feels awkward—on your birthday no less, as if the words are molasses and they are stuck on your tongue, fighting to reach past your lips. 

You will shake, you will wonder, but you will not cry. You will call your siblings from that pay phone in the lobby. Your answers will be short, curt and cryptic. You will say you are moving east, when you are actually going west. You’d never been homeless before and that was quite the shock.  For one night, we didn’t know where the next day would begin or end. At school people will ask you, “How you are doing?” You will nod and smile. Those sheets in the hotel will always make you itch. Maybe that’s when the insomnia started, knowing that if you could just make it to the sunrise, the world may return to normal.

And I am here to tell you it does. 6,515 sunrises later to be exact. It just takes time. May the peace you have made within yourself always be a guide. Be kind to them, as we are all just trying to figure it out. Enjoy the times with your friends and family, as it gets harder and harder to reclaim that time. Ambition and fear are a hell of a cocktail for success.

Kiss the girl, send the card, get on the plane and always say thank you.

Know it will be okay. I write this to you 18 years later—on our birthday no less, some 4,000 miles away in the City of Dreaming Spires. Many nights have passed since your world was turned upside down. I hope the love you saw break before you doesn’t make you bitter. “Mysteries of attraction could not be explained through logic. Sometime the fractures in two separate souls became the very hinges that held them together.” ~Lisa Kleypas

Sincerely,

O.K.A

[Written 12.13.20]