Many thanks to the Aloft Blog for bringing this idea to fruition. May we all have the courage to bear our souls the way that Amanda Lipnak did.
Here is my letter to myself 10 years ago:
Dear, Elspeth:
Congratulations, graduate! You have successfully joined the workforce and accepted your first Big Girl job.
But let’s be honest, you really need to stop wearing those poop brown Ann Taylor pants with your beige loafers, ok? The white socks don’t help either.
The next few years are going to feel like driving in a car in stop and go traffic for you. At times, you’ll be on the open road with all the glee of a happy dog – but mostly, you’ll move inch by inch, becoming car sick at times, tired, broken, and loathsome before you eventually stagger to your destination, exhausted and down trodden.
I have to warn you about a few people.
First, you need to kiss that attorney boss of yours goodbye. You’ve managed her office for almost two years, booking all her appointments, and smoothing over constant disorganization, only to be given a pittance of a raise that barely covers your living expenses…again.
Every morning when the phone rang at 8:30am just as you rushed in from the train, and you could hear her slurping coffee, still hungover from sleep, asking, What’s happening?
Despite your best efforts, you will never have the ability to know exactly what’s happening in the office before you arrive at the office. You will never be psychic.
But your intuition tells you you are unhappy. It says run run run. So you do. You go charging head-first into an adventure with an older, short, squared-headed, hairy man 14 years older than you.
And because you have escaped, ending an engagement in the process, it clearly seems like a good idea to just go with it. You join his start-up corporation as the third member of a team.
Within the organization, you get a fancy title as Vice President of Operations. Every night, you schmooze, earning very little, when you earn anything at all. All this will turn out just fine – because you are strong, stubborn, and refuse to take no for an answer.
But here is where I must correct your course of blind self action.
Here you must stop and see something you could not see at the time; there is no good in this selfish little man. He is a shitty human being who cares only for his own needs. In his own fight to survive, he will bite even the hand – yours – that feeds him.
He’ll dump you with nothing – not even giving you the photos or music collection from your office computer. You will not even be given the respect of bidding goodbye to clients, colleagues, or employees, many of whom you helped to hire.
One day he will say, “I need to go at this solo,” and you will have to turn your back on everything the two of you had built together, like watching your house of cards catch a strong breeze just as it began to stand alone.
You will know in your heart of hearts that he will never be able to replace you; all of the biggest, ongoing contracts were a result of your late nights and long mornings. While he sat in the office, taking calls, you, my dear, made it rain.
He is not wise at business, or capable of great success. Instead, he is smitten. And his love for you makes him blind for a while. So, I must tell you, don’t be afraid. You can be far more powerful alone than you ever were with him.
Elspeth, be honest with yourself. Know that you are capable of so much more than the way he is using you to his own advantage. Just like you have before, recognize that you can start over by walking away without looking back.
And at that moment, when you start to feel like a bobcat in a cage, when you are raging, slashing out, recognizing that you would rather fight than wither, know that leaving is absolutely the right decision. Your hate like shrapnel will strike a few others, too, but such actions cannot be avoided in times of war.
Next you will find yourself jobless and homeless…right before your boyfriend breaks up with you. I cannot even write this without laughing, but such is life.
No, believe me, the Universe will provide. And please stop crying in the shower. It’s making your eyes look puffy, as though you are much older than your 30 years, my dear.
Ugh – wait – you are probably wondering how you got homeless too. Well, that’s another snake in the grass story. This one is far simpler: learn your lesson that people value themselves first.
If a woman you live with meets a man and she loves that man, no matter how many times you were there for her, the man will take precedent. She will choose his needs, and you will find yourself, on a cold February, being booted, jobless, scared, from a dank basement.
You will learn that this is an inevitable truth for most people in relationships, and that new relationships are even more precarious to try and predict.
As your friends start to marry and have babies, they, too, will disappear like an old, fading picture; you can recall it as it was, but it will never be the same. Let them go from your life if seeing them feels like work instead of joy. Don’t blame yourself, it’s simply the way of the world.
So there you’ll be, living with the guy who didn’t dump you yet because you had no job and nowhere else to go, wondering what the heck is next, and…well, some things will finally start to turn around for you when you are recruited for a copywriting assignment.
You will begin to use a mantra you could not have understood in your early 20s; I am not participating in your drama.
The truth here is clear. You must use your frustration over the selfish little man, your hurt over the abandonment of a friend, and your heartbreak to crawl out from the ashes.
Instead of feeling beaten, let that fiery ball be your guide. Accept that there’s a path in life which you must stumble on blindly one step at a time no matter where it leads.
And where will it lead?
After a year with Three Angry Lesbians, you will start to see your ability to keep your business afloat is far more possible than you ever imagined. As Glenda already told you, “You had the power all along, my dear.”
You’ll spend a year dating anyone who asks you, from psychiatrists to ex-priests, only to find yourself latched onto by a gregarious round man. He will become your BFF. He will drive you to the airport at 4am, humor your girly rants, and enamor you with his misadventures in all things life, like that time when he had to change a diaper on his neighbor’s dog.
You will find yourself falling in love with a brilliant man, who’s brain you can’t get enough of. He says he’s 6′ tall, but, measuring him in the movie theater parking lot, it’s quite clear 5’10” is more likely. When you have the urge to end things with him, do it.
You’ll find your relationship completely healed when you rejoin forces because each of you will have recognized you fit together like legos will all of life’s important points sticking out and fitting in.
You’ll live alone for a few years, excepting a stint when a Goddess pops into your life for a few adventurous girl trips. Letting her come, and letting her go, will be hard for you, but understand that she has her own path to take.
Likewise, you must endure one more stint in a cube. Just like always, you’ll ask too many questions of management until they glare at you for questioning “The Policy.” This will seal the deal on your willingness to go absolutely any distance necessary to work only with creative, individual bosses you respect; several grace you in coming years.
Saying goodbye to Delilah, the chocolate point Siamese cat, will bring you a bonded pair of lilac points. As you sit writing, and watching them spoon some days, the perfect pillows for each other, you’ll recognize a Universal truth that even I could never teach you: It will all be alright.
Even on your darkest days, your coldest hour, you’ll find someone to lean on. You’ll spin your words onto the page, answering emails a mile a minute, you’ll sit by yourself, and you will just know, Everything is ok.
You are so very loved. You are relevant, powerful, and well-accomplished. But beyond all things, this easy, carefree contentment, it is what they call happiness. And, at 33, you have finally started to achieve it.
All my best –
Me
P.S. Get back to work and stop playing on the internet. Unbelievable.