Dear Me

Dear Me,
         Let me begin this letter by saying how very proud I am of you for surviving last year. There was a time toward the end of the year that I honestly did not know how you would make it. Somehow, you managed to hold your family together. Incredibly, you stand extant. Rejoice in that, at least.
I can remember those long nights sitting in front of this very screen pounding out some of the finest writing of our lives and wondering just how we would ever survive the awful crisis that has befallen us. Losing the house we worked so hard on for eight years could possibly have been the worst event of your life. I miss that house, but as your wife says, as long the family is together, your home will always be where your heart is.

         I always knew in my soul that you would survive and here you are, much stronger because of it. You have a good heart. Some of the decisions you faced could have turned out much worse than they did. Yet, even though you knew that the right choices would be the painful choices, more often than not, you made them anyway. You could have taken the easy way out but you knew that someone else would be hurt and you chose to face the fire yourself. You bore the brunt of the burden squarely on your own shoulders. I am very proud of you.

         If there is one lesson to be learned from the previous year, it is that you are much stronger than you thought, going in. You have also discovered that you are more stalwart than you’d imagined. Each time life put you down you bounced back through prayer and perseverance. You have held your head high and you did what had to be done. Not a whole lot of people would have taken that road. You now know that you can take anything the New Year has to offer.

         Speaking of the New Year, let us face some cold hard facts. Even though you did your very best, last year you lost the best job you have ever had. You let the pain of your arthritis and the injury to your foot get the better of you. You became addicted to pain medication. You stopped going to church altogether. You lost your home and most of the possessions you treasured. Then you did one of the worse thing you could have done. Some time in June, just when life seemed as if it could not get more desperate, you stopped writing. Writing is the one medication to which you can afford to be addicted. It lifts your spirit and brings out the creative and most honest part of you. Sometimes, the circumstances you cannot control are the ones that bring you down. It isn’t anyone’s fault. It’s just the way things turned out.

                Now is the time to turn your life around. You are so much stronger now than you were a year ago. I have every confidence that you can dig deep inside of yourself and find that resolve that carried you through the darkest of times. It is time to use that resolve to go on the offensive. You have to get out of survival mode and start moving forward, even if it is just a matter of inches at a time. And so, without further dwelling on a past that cannot be changed, let us take some of that resolve and look at this years resolutions.

         Resolution is a word that has always conjured up images of failure for you. Like your parents before you, resolutions were something you made in good faith, only to break them a week or a month later. Therefore, this year, dear me, we will not make resolutions. This will be a year of DECLARATION!

Declaration Number One:
         You will break the many bad habits you have acquired over the years and become a stronger, healthier person. This declaration is particularly important, not only for your benefit, it is vital for the two people that depend on you to provide stability and a comfortable life. You shall declare a state of war on your consuetude for tobacco and pills. Given the amount of discomfort you were able to endure last year, quitting smoking should not be as hard as it has the reputation of being. No matter what the cost, you will prevail.

Declaration Number Two:
         If you were to die right now, would the people in your life know how you feel about them? Would there be any doubt about the love and appreciation you have for your wife? Would your mother-in-law, who is dependent upon you for everything, miss you? Does your wife realize how much you admire her strength in the face of so much pain and her courage enduring so many surgeries? Would your brother, Dutch, realize how much you respect his conspicuous poetic talent? Would he know how greatly you admire his sentience with the written word? This is the year that you release your self-conscious inhibition with emotion and become a frank and sincere man. You will embrace those that mean so much to you and learn to love all people, as God wants us to. The human race is a brother-hood of people who live together and share each the problems of the other. It is time to descry your reciprocal relationship with your fellow man.

Declaration Number Three:
         Forty-nine years of age is not the best age to start trying to build a career but lets face it, you are not alone. Hundreds of thousands of people were forced in to the same situation last year. You have to adapt to life on what amounts to about a third of your former income and begin moving forward again. This is the time to delve into your new job and learn everything there is to know about it. You must make yourself indispensable. Knowledge is power. In your present physical condition, you will need all the power you can get to keep up with the younger, more ambitious competition. Your career declaration is to excel at work and save some money. Save as if your very life depended on it because it very well may.          

Declaration Number Four:
         Looking back on the previous year in a subjective way has brought to light an overwhelming fact. Clearly, you allowed the first few unfortunate events to seep into your subconscious mind and start a negative chain of thought. You fed these negative thoughts to your subconscious and to everyone around you until it became the axiom of your life. It became evident that bad things were going to happen and they did.

                This year you will abolish all negative thoughts and officially abrogate their very possibility from your belief system. The mind will, more often than not, get what it expects. You will no longer assume the worst of any situation. You will envisage all the wondrous and ambrosial opportunities each event has to offer and expect the best of every situation. This is a declaration of a positive perspective on life, love, and your God-given right to the pursuit of happiness. So it is written, so shall it be done!

                This last declaration is, quite possibly, the most important of them all. Many people who read this “Letter To Me” will not agree to its degree of importance. I defend it simply with breviloquence, saying, “lying on your deathbed, hopefully many years from now, will you look back and be satisfied that you did the one thing that made you truly happy, to the best of your ability?” 
Will the compendious prologue of your life include the appellation, Author?

Declaration Number Five:
                You will write every day as is feasibly possible. More than that, you will submit your work. You have been writing in one form or another since childhood. Never once, have you ever submitted any writing for possible publication. This year you will submit poetry, short stories, articles, or even a novel to a publisher. If there is one thing that has always defined you to yourself, it is your love of writing. The season of fear is over. You may be rejected, but you will give it your best effort and you will put it out there for the entire world to see and to judge. You will do this without fear because you know that being accepted or being published is great, but the true joy comes with the act of writing.

Take care of yourself, Dear Me. You are worth it!

Oceans of Love,
Me