Letter To Self

Apology Accepted

Photo by Digital Content Writers India on Unsplash

Dear Addy,

First of all, you should know that you are an amazing person and second, you look like a Greek god now. I still don’t know how that happened., but I’m not asking questions. Just don’t let it get to your head. We both know you still trip over absolutely nothing and forget why you walked into a room.

Now that that’s out of the way, I need to say sorry.

I know I’ve been a pain in the a** for far too long, and I know I’ve been miserable knowing it and still being that way. I want to apologize for a lot of things I did. At the top of the list is that I tried to kill myself at the age of seventeen, and that was the first and last time. Not that I succeeded, because then I wouldn’t be writing this letter. Duh!

I f***ed up so many times that, by the time I realized it, it already felt too late. But we’ve learned that it’s never too late for anything, so here we go again…

I also want to apologize for continuing to treat you like someone I didn’t even like. Every time something went wrong, I blamed you first. Every mistake became proof that you were the problem. I don’t think I ever stopped to ask whether you were just tired, scared, or simply trying your best with what you had.

I’m also sorry for the amount of pressure I put on you for absolutely no reason. I expected you to become a different person overnight, then got disappointed every morning when you woke up as… you.

I’m sorry for deleting photos just because you didn’t like your face in them. Now there are entire years I can’t even look back on.

I’m sorry for making you believe you had to earn the right to feel proud of yourself. Every achievement immediately became, “Yeah, but you should’ve done it sooner.”

Also… thanks for not actually listening to me all the time.

Because, honestly, seventeen-year-old me had the decision-making skills of a wet sock.

I’m sorry for the year I convinced you that everyone would honestly be fine without you around. That’s the one I have the hardest time forgiving myself for, not gonna lie. You believed me. Seventeen-year-old you actually believed me, and that’s on me, not you.

You’re twenty-something now, tripping over nothing, forgetting why you walked into rooms, looking annoyingly good for reasons neither of us understands, and you’re still here. I know “still here” sounds like a low bar. It’s not. It was the only bar that mattered for a long time, and you cleared it, over and over, on days I gave you every reason not to.

So…thanks. For outlasting me on my worst days. For not actually listening when I told you it was hopeless. Seventeen-year-old me had the emotional range of a Roomba bumping into the same wall repeatedly, and you still made it out the other side of that.

And thank you for hanging in there anyway. I wasn’t exactly the easiest person to share a brain with.

Your’s truly,

Addy

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💙

Craig

Thanks for reading!