Dear A Younger Shorter Me
It may come as a shock to you my littler self, but it gets better from this point on. You may think, “What am I going to do with my life? Where am I going to grow up and live? How am I ever going to get down from this cliff?” I know your brother is there staring down at you, everything is flowing around in slow motion, your brother's face contorting slowly seeming to say that he is going to get help. You are however going to fail, and subsequently fall, but hey, you are going to survive this. You are going to kiss your first girlfriend this summer. It will be at camp in the damp moonlight with no one around but the crickets, and moon, and awkward lips. After that you are going to have a hard time in middle school, a kid will slap you square in the face, you’ll get a weird boner in history class from the picture of the map for some reason, and your second girlfriend will last a day. So, here it goes, younger self, let go of the branch, make sure you realize your fall is going to hurt more than you think it will. Your leg is going to break. It's going to twist and snap in three places, so close to your growth plate you can imagine now your leg is ten inches shorter. You will almost black out, and your father in the last moment of consciousness will run up lean down to you and tell you to walk it off. Forget that before this life was wide open and happy. Before this, the worst thing that happened to you was a bee sting. Before this, today was just fun in the sun jumping into the lake off cliff sides. In retrospect you will realize that children probably shouldn’t be doing this unsupervised. Life is long and full of falls from high places, just realize what doesn’t kill you makes you different, stronger, less fearful. Let go of the fear and fall.