b ~ Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap

Dear Me, (about to enter your senior year of high school)

There will be times when you are unsure what you are doing. Quite
often in fact. Yet I hope you will persist. It’s difficult to face
this truth, but you cannot control everything. Believe me when I say
it’s okay to make mistakes, it’s how you will learn. The next couple
of years will be fraught with change. You will strike out on your own,
leaving behind boyfriend and everyone else that you thought mattered
to you. The school you will settle on will be a great choice, but you
won’t graduate from there. And again I say, persist.

It may seem like you can’t get your bearings, difficult to maintain
your footing on uneven ground. Your landscape will keep shifting and
morphing; solid one moment, icy slick the next. Remember the time you
slid down the snow-covered driveway in your ballet flats and landed
under your friend’s car, so stubborn in your refusal to wear boots to
school. (I will say that in the future you end up in a place that has
quite a lot of cold weather and boots have gotten considerably more
fashionable.) That was not the first time you picked yourself up and
moved on, you will have plenty more opportunity to slip and slide
accidentally and then sometimes with intention. There are times you
will want to put on your socks and slide around the wooden floors,
there are times when you want to dance, and there are times when you
want to leap.

Yet you don’t always give in to that desire.

It’s not that you don’t want to jump, to feel that thrill that rush
when you let go, it’s just that the more conservative, rational side
of your brain takes over. You over analyze the what if, smothering
that butterfly like a child who doesn’t yet know the word gentle.

So let me tell you this:

You can’t always make the best judgment while you are down on the
ground immersed on the situation. Climbing up to a tall height gives
you a different perspective, a chance to see everything below and take
in the big picture. That ariel view can do wonders for you. Don’t be
afraid of heights. Climb with gusto, fall with flair and grace. Leap
as if there is no safety net. There will be someone there to catch you
I promise.

Don’t think about it, just close your eyes and let go.

Yours Always,
me
PS Don’t get discouraged when you leave the position at the vet’s
office, it’s the job at the bookstore that’s life changing.