Letter to myself

Dear Guy,

Hopefully by the next time you’re (I’m?) reading this most or all of the problems facing you this year have passed. Hopefully you like yourself more, are enthusiastic about what’s going on and is upcoming, and are still with the friends you made this year. This school year has been rough, and 2023 as a whole hasn’t been much better to this point. Grandpa died, and that hit you harder than you expected, and not in the way you wanted. Grieving has been a slow and ugly process, and much less linear than you expected. You’ll be doing just fine and then think of or do something that reminds you of him, and suddenly all that you want to do is lie down and think about him, to have him back to give him a hug and share cookies, play a game, or complain about the job that the referees are doing in whatever game is on. Even writing that, actually, your eyes started to tear up. I’m sure you still miss him and grieve, but maybe by the time you read this it will be just a little easier.

School has been rough, to say the least. The motivation issues are in full swing. There have been many days where you sit and realize that you just, don’t care. About your grades, about what you’re learning, about graduating. First semester was going okay until you started getting sick, missed a few assignments, then spiraled. Second semester was going pretty well until Grandpa got sick, and then you started spiraling again. Right now is a rather crucial moment for you, actually. You’re behind by a lot, and if you let things stand as they are then you’ll flunk out and have to take a semester off. However, if you manage to accept the help that other people are offering you and take the time to churn through all of the writing assignments, you’ll make it onto the next semester and finally into the classes that you need for your biology major. Even better, you’ll only have one writing-based class going into the fall semester. Everything else will be test based, so maybe that will make everything just a little easier.

You’ve also been dealing with self-harm issues. I’ve made it 6 months now without cutting my arm, and I’m in therapy now so things are going better on that front. You’ve told your friends here in college, including AS, in March. You told your friends in Boulder in November. You still haven’t told anyone in the family yet, but you plan to. I’m guessing that even if you never cut again (which I think we’re capable of and honestly is pretty likely) that you’ll never truly get rid of those thoughts from your mind, just get better at taking away their power. The plan right now is to tattoo over the scars after a year, so if you’re reading this after getting it, I hope you’re happy with how it looks. I’m still not sure what I want the tattoo to be of. I think an anatomical heart with snakes coming out of the valves would be pretty cool, but I think that’s a tattoo that’s better for a less significant moment. Whether you end up getting the tattoo or not, I hope that time and therapy have each done their job in making managing that issue a little easier.

This assignment is technically called “What do you want to do with your one wild and precious life in this brave new world?” in reference to two of our assignments in class this year. At the very start of the year you wrote an essay answering the first part of the question: “what do you want to do with your one wild and precious life?” You were majoring in statistics at that point, and you were pretty confident you were on the right path for you so you talked about how your competitiveness led you to love sports and the world of sports statistics. Then the rest of the year happened and everything has been flipped on its head. You’ve switched your major, your favorite person in the world is gone, you’ve started dating, you dealt with self-harm, your scholarship and enrollment in college is in jeopardy, and you feel overwhelmed and frozen. You take any and every opportunity to look away from all of that and bury yourself in games and watching sports, but now is finally the time where you can’t look away any longer and you have to face it. Now is the time to face your own personal Brave New World. Hopefully, by the end of all of these hard challenges that you’re facing right now in this moment, you’ll set yourself up for everything to be just a little easier. Actually, I don’t have to hope or wonder about that. I know that it will be. Because despite all of the things that you’ve been through this year, the problems that you both could and couldn’t control, and the standard stress of the first year of college, you’ve met some great people and had a lot of fun. You’ve kept your head high for them, and now you just have to keep your head high for you.

You don’t love yourself right now, but I’m confident that you will by the time you read this. And because of that, I’ll sign off this letter assuming that you love yourself again.

With love and an optimistic eye towards to future,

Guy Meletto