Note to Self.

Holy crap, ya'll. Tomorrow I'm gonna be 32! I'm excited.  I don't have a single "thing" planned besides a normal Monday but something about that is making me really happy this year.  I just sort of feel like all I've got to do is just be and it feels really good.

The past 10 years have been.... they've been a lifetime, really.  Sitting here today it seems like everything prior to 2001 is ancient history.  In an effort to commemorate, I thought I'd write my 22-year-old self a letter*.


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Dear 2001 Sarah,

Welcome to Texas! You've already been here for two months, and it got off to a bad start.  Close friends suffered a major loss, you and your husband aren't acclimating well to your new jobs, and you're getting depressed.  You've been married for 7 months now.  It's not working for either one of you, and that stinks. You and him both feel like you're missing some sort of clue that is supposed to make this work, but if you want my honest opinion, I think you were both young, romantic, and dumb.  He's a great guy, and you're a great girl.  And here's some news... before too long, both of you are going to realize that there's not enough dedication in the world to fix it. You're just ill suited.  You're going to call it quits and you're going to have a little bit of hurt and some drama, but you two will emerge as friends... and his next wife is going to be absolutely amazing and he's going to make it work because he got his training wheel time in with you. So don't feel like a total failure... just don't be so shortsighted next time.  Not that you'll listen.

Shortly after your marriage ends, your mother is gong to get very ill, and she's going to pass away.  This is going to be a dark and miserable time, and you're going to have to set aside your own mourning to be there for your father, and it is going to be so very hard.  You'll have the support of some friends that want to be near but can't, not as much as they'd like.  You won't be alone but often you'll feel that way.  A long-distance love affair will keep you going and give you some hope but ultimately, you're not going to be good at long distance.  There's going to be more feeling like failure and that's a bad thing, because in 10 years he probably won't even really still be holding that against you, and you won't be holding it against yourself, either.  Unfortunately, you're going to drink too much and smoke too much and you really should remember to rest and try to do some healing. You won't- but you should.

A year or so later, you're going to meet a man at a club one night who seems so magical and charismatic and brilliant that you won't be able to believe your luck.  You're going to have to have surgery and he's going to take care of you and when you come out of your morphine induced haze a few weeks later, you're not going to bother telling him to go home.  This is going to end up sucking like a chest wound but I wouldn't undo it if I could, at least, not in it's entirety.  It is obviously a lesson you need to learn, but I would at least lock up your credit cards and tell a couple of your friends to keep a closer eye on you so that maybe it could end a few months earlier before it all got as bad as it did.  You're going to get hurt badly. You're going to end up broke and with a lot of debt.  You're going to end that chapter as a very sad, very insecure person, and you will feel like you've completely failed at life.  You're going to feel like Texas has completely and irreversibly broken you... and then you're going to leave Texas for Louisiana with nothing but "healing" on your mind.

As the years go by, you will learn to value the people that are important to you as the most cherished things you have in your life.  You are going to buy a home out in the woods where all of the ones dear to your heart can feel "at home" and you are going to take great joy in gathering them near.  You're going to heal, largely because of their amazing, dysfunctional, and perfect influence on you.  You're going to be built up better than you ever were before, and you're going to learn to trust in your ability to make decisions that aren't always bad for you.  You'll fall in love, again, and you'll fall out, but you'll take out of that one of the best friends you've ever had and a confidence that you can redefine relationships without losing them altogether, when it's right to do so.  You are going to lose people that you love very much, and you're going to mourn their losses with your family and friends, and you're going to shore one another up with love and a lot of bourbon.  You are going to have more blessings than you know what to do with and you will always find somebody who wants to spend their time with you because you're actually a fun person to be with.  You will have helped to build an amazing family that defies all practical definitions, but is perfect in it's impracticality.  You're still going to suck at "Capital R" Relationships but you're not going to mind so much, because you're so damned charmed in all the other parts of your life, so it's going to be ok.  You will only be alone when you want to be and you'll rarely ever be lonely.

You're going to lose some weight, get active, and you're going to end up actually looking forward to the joy that your next 10 years will bring, rather than just wishing they would get over with.  And then you're going to buy a pair of boxing gloves and then some roller skates and then a beautiful life is only going to get more enchanted. 

I don't want to ruin all the good parts, of course, so I'll close this out with this:  You'll realize one day, shortly before your 32nd birthday that you haven't been depressed in half a decade or more, not like you used to be.  You'll figure out that that excitement you feel almost every night when you go to bed is akin to that of a child on Christmas Eve, because you just can't wait to see what the next day will bring... and you're going to get to have that every day, because you're just really damn happy.

How badass is that?


Much Love,



31.999 year old You.



*Nope. Not an original idea. I stole it from a book.