Hey, girl.
It’s kind of crazy to think just how fast time flies. It’s kind of crazy that there was a point in your life when you were juggling all of these different things in your life, and how quickly those things were able to play themselves out. I remember how I felt during that important time in your life; feeling like it was never going to end or it was going to end in a way that would’ve been detrimental to my mental health. Not gonna lie, that was a hard fucking time for you, and even as 31-year-old Liz, we are so proud of you for coming out better than before in the end.
We both know why we’re writing this. It’s still fresh enough for us to remember, and maybe more talking about it in therapy is needed in hopes to one day go through a month of February without having this lingering thought of what my life used to look like. I don’t miss it, and I know you wish you never had to live through it, but somehow it was needed for us to understand why it had to happen in the first place.
One thing’s for sure, is that you made it out of it and we are here because of it.
Despite the outcome and how everything transpired, we are now in a place where we can reflect without resentment, or feeling any emotion that triggers negative cognition in any way possible. We’ve grown to not hold grudges (you held on to them like your life depended on it before) and we’ve learned that sometimes, it hurts more to hold on to things than to let them go. You always fight to hold onto things because you would see the good in everything and everyone. We’ve grown to learn that’s not always the case. We’ve grown to learn that sometimes, that ideology even applies to you.
Since then, we’ve done a lot of work in hopes that we would figure this whole “life” thing out. The good thing is that we did; we are undoubtedly living the best years of our lives. The bad thing is that we have reached that part of our lives where we’ve put those old worries and anxieties to rest, and now have new ones that we are unfamiliar with. I like to call them the ‘double As’: Adulthood anxieties.
Regardless, your work has not gone unnoticed. Your work to bettering yourself is why we are in the place we are in now, and that we are able to move forward towards the things that we should be focusing on at this age. I understand where you came from when you were scared and afraid of making these decisions for a better life; I am now battling a new level of those decisions being 31 years old. I am still scared, and I am still uncertain how I am going to overcome these fears, but I know I am capable of doing so because I lived to see you do it at 29.
29, you will always be such an important year of my life, and I fear that your courage, bravery, and drive to be a better person can only happen if something traumatic happens again. I don’t want to have to lose more people in order to make room for me to grow. I don’t want to feel like I have to strip my entire identity just to discover a new one. I don’t want to have to feel like I’m lost in society again because the things that defined me are not applicable anymore. I know your shaking your head, not wanting to tell me that isn’t possible because you also feared these things when going through your rough time in life as well.
29, you will forever be iconic for doing some of the things that 18, 24, and even 26 couldn’t even do. At 31, you inspire me to always go for it, despite being scared to, because you’ve shown me that we will always make it out of it being better than before.
Letters From Liz. 