By Derek Frazier
Dear itty-bitty me,
Relax. Discover. Dream. And don’t doubt yourself.
Relax. Math will always be something that challenges and frustrates you, but it’s nothing you won’t be able to handle. Your anxieties will never go away. You will experience true and earth shaking anxieties. Anxieties about fitting in, and not making friends, whether or not you’ll ever fall in love. You’ll fit in just fine, you’ll apply to an art school where being goofy, tea addicted, and book obsessed is almost a requirement. You’ll make friends, lots of them. Friends who will always have your back and who you will always be there when you’re angry, sad, or lost in the world. You’ll never stop being a big softy, kind and polite, and there is nothing wrong with that. You’ll fall in love too, a lot. But that’s okay, because you’ll learn that to become the person writing this letter you’ll need to understand what it means to truly love someone more than life itself. And how much it hurts when you lose them.
Discover. Branch out. Pull yourself out of the fantasy-obsessed trench you’ll dig yourself in sixth grade. You’ll learn that you are a pretty good poet, that creative nonfiction isn’t as bad as you thought because you love journaling. You’ll learn things like how to find the volume of a cylinder, that weight is actually the amount of force gravity has on an object, and that your second favorite color is grey. You’ll learn about other religions, realize you want to be a confirmed Christian, you’ll learn that even though you’re terrified of being an adult you love the idea of being a father.
Dream. Dream big. Dream about owning your own brewery. Daydream about how good the way “Professor Frazier” sounds. Make being a paleontologist a life long ambition. Buy every fossil you can find and spend days covered in dirt. Imagine smiles on your future children’s faces when you read them The Hobbit as a bedtime story. These dreams will allow you to do incredible things, to keep going. You’ll get into an art school and study to become a writer , you’ll climb a waterfall, and you will spend sleepless nights writing poetry.
Speaking of which, don’t doubt yourself. You are stronger than you know, both physically and emotionally. You can do this. Sure, going to school for almost a quarter of your life sounds intimidating but don’t spend your time worrying about that. Think of the family you’ll create, the friends you’ll make and all the things you’ll accomplish. Don’t doubt your abilities, and don’t worry about what tomorrow brings. Because as Mom will one day tell you, “you can only eat an elephant one bite at a time.”
Wishing you all the assurance in the world,
the much, much taller you
Post Script Magazine. 