A Letter to a 25 Year Old

Dear 25 year old me, I don’t really know where to begin in a year that has felt like time has stretched like a tightrope over a chasm in the longest journey ever, or if those steps have felt so significant that it’s been a year and I don’t know how I’m standing nearly on the other side of what was one of the worst years of my life. I just remember being on the precipice of a cliff, staring at the thin line before me, wondering how I would ever brave the first steps, let alone get myself to move from the numbing state I was in. Each day felt like dragging my feet across a quivering wire while holding my breath with the world’s weight on my back, hoping beyond hope that that weight would lessen, that I would feel some sense of relief. But the backpack kept getting heavier, and the task of navigating the fine line of grief got harder and harder, but somehow I was doing it each day unknowingly and unwanted.

Because the biggest question on the edge of being 24 turning 25, was what was on the other side of all my grief? Who could I be with my grief? Who could I be after my grief?

“I wonder if I will find the version of me

I want to be

After all this pain is said and done

If I can say even though I struggled

And lost everything

That I won.”

-lfhokulani

I didn’t know who I could be—who I wanted to be.

“It’s easy to lose yourself in the sands of time.”

-lfhokulani

If I’m being completely honest with myself a year later, I’m not really sure who I am anymore. I do think that I don’t feel as heavy on the inside to be in a place where I don’t care to try to find out; I’ve been trying every day, and some days are harder than others. It’s just difficult when I knew a version of myself that would talk freely around people who I loved and felt comfortable with. A version who would laugh easily and crack jokes at trashy reality TV shows or some pop culture thing I found funny. A version of myself who used to run faster, or feel more energized to take care of myself because I felt good in my body and skin and like I wasn’t built of stones with water rushing through every crevice, trying to wear me down. A version of myself that could stand tall, confident in how I presented myself because I felt at the time I knew who I was and that I was happy with that version who fought so hard to be here.

And that version just passed away in a year. She’s gone.

And everyday I grieve that version of the person I was becoming because I know she’s not in me the same way.

I wish she was.

I mean, I know there’s qualities of the same girl inside of me and she’s hiding, scared, exhausted.

But she’s been gone for so long, and it feels like everyday, I’m working a job in real life and working to find her. Every single day. And it’s hard. It’s hard because I know she’s forever changed even if I do find her, so I’m chasing a version of myself that is within me, but also a version I have not met yet. It’s almost like meeting someone new, and you don’t recognize their face. You have to get used to that new person—get aquatinted with them. I’m meeting myself everyday. Sometimes I’m not really proud of who I’m meeting, and that terrifies me.

I don’t know if maybe it’s just the grief or the circumstances I dealt with at this age, but this has been the year I have felt the most angry.

Angry at the world.

Angry at my boss.

Angry at my friends.

Angry at my “family.”

Angry at work.

Angry at myself.

Just plain furious.

I hate, hate, hate anger.

I despise my anger with a passion.

I fear all the time that I’ve become the monster that inspired that hate of anger—something I swore I would never become or never let succumb me.

But gosh, when you work in my profession, anger and frustration is the top emotion, and it’s not a pretty emotion.

Anger is messy, scary. Anger takes over your whole body from a person’s face contortions, clenched fists, tense shoulders, rigid gate. Anger overtakes the inside too from the increased heartbeat and the throbbing you feel in the base of your head or neck, that just wants to scream. I’ve been so, so angry. I hate it.

I hate that I hate the angry part of myself, but thankfully I’m learning to give my angry part some grace, some kindness.

I believe I hated and feared being angry for so long because of the way anger from others affected me growing up, but now I know that anger is just a natural human emotion and it’s not all of me even on the days that it feels like it is. It’s okay to be angry. It’s okay to want to scream into the world. It’s okay to raise my voice and feel so frustrated that my heart is beating fast because I care so much, and I have big emotions that I need to get out. It’s not okay to physically take out that anger, but it is okay to feel angry, especially after all the things I’ve experienced. Let yourself feel angry, it doesn’t mean you are a monster. It doesn’t mean you are ugly for it because that just makes the monster angrier because you hate yourself for what you feel. But anger is not ugly, it’s just a part.

I’m still learning that my angry monster isn’t me.

Gosh, have I been frustrated in so many aspects it’s not funny.

When I lost seemingly everything last year, I just prayed every day that there would be a day when things got better.

I don’t really know when things truly get better or life doesn’t feel as heavy as it does. I’m still praying and hoping for that day. Life does not feel like an Atlan weight like last year more so like the world’s heaviest boulder is on my shoulder while I’m hiking up a crumbling mountain–onerous, but not entirely soul-crushing.

In therapy, I chose this picture card of a boy holding up the weight of the world. My therapist asked me to explain what I saw and why I chose the card. I saw a boy who was sweating, holding up the weight of the world, his shoes were untied, and he looked exhausted and frustrated. My therapist laughed when I said the boy’s shoe was untied because that was the most trivial thing about the entire picture, however, she asked me why do I think the boy’s shoe was untied. I said that the boy has the weight of the world to carry that he couldn’t even tie his shoe—he couldn’t even take care of himself. I stared at the card for minutes, what felt like hours. I remember tearing up, and honestly writing this now makes me tear up all over again because that picture really personified how I felt—feel—every single day. And I never fully realized how heavy that weight was—how absolutely crushing that weight was—until I was looking at myself reflected in a simple picture card. I always knew and felt like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders, but to see a representation of how I felt made that emotion tangible—real. I felt so much sorrow for this boy because I know that weight well, and I wanted to help this boy carry the weight of the world. I wanted him to know he could set the weight down.

That’s what my therapist asked, “What does the boy need?”

He needed to put the weight of the world down.

I need to put the weight of the world down.

It doesn’t mean I failed or I couldn’t hold all.

It just means that the weight was too heavy, and I needed a break. I needed to breathe. I needed to take care of myself.

I needed to see this picture and think about its meaning to know exactly what I need.

I am going to mention this in my yearly post, but I was switched grade levels to kindergarten two weeks before the school year. No questions, just a statement of, “We need another kindergarten teacher,” and done. I wasn’t really given a choice, more so told that the change was going to happen and I was going to have to move classrooms all over again. I was going to move grades all over again. I was going to move teams all over again. I was going to change lessons all over again. I was going to start all over again. I’ve had four classrooms in five years. I’ve taught four grades in five years.

I’m exhausted.

Call me weak, but I freaking am tired of change.

I just wanted a break, I wanted to breathe.

But this unexpected, unwanted change left me with bated breath, anxious palpitations, and the weight of the world back on my shoulders. The stress of changing grades, of meshing with a new team, of figuring out how to teach kindergarten all over again, how to be responsible for a class of nearly thirty kids every single day. No time to breath.

Change.

Change.

Change.

I feel so dumb because I thought I could have a break in teaching the same grade again—that this year would be easier after last year—but jokes on me. Things got harder again.

And I don’t know what cosmic force or the universe that keeps trying to push my strength or weakness, but I’m so f***ing exhausted. My body has never felt more sore from standing all day, walking around, chasing kids, feeling tense and angry, raising my voice. I have never felt so mumblingly anxious with working to make lessons every weekend again, staying late to set up my classroom or figure out lessons, go to numerous meetings like I’m a first year teacher again, or staying up late to do tedious report cards that kindergarten requires. I just feel like I’m getting pummeled and laughed at by the universe, and it hurts because I’m beyond burnt out. I’m ashes.

But I have to keep going because this is my job, this is life.

And I still drag myself every day being in a place I don’t want to be. Now more so, a grade I don’t want to be, which very much sucks. I can’t even begin to describe how I never ever want to teach kindergarten again or I don’t want to work with kids younger than seven because I fully had my fair share of the young kids and I’m over it. I completely understand now why teachers quit.

I’ve contemplated quitting a lot last year—the most I’ve ever just wanted to give up. But this year, I really began to look into what I would do if I wasn’t a teacher. That was the scariest, harrowing thought of them all. I always wanted to be a teacher—this was the dream—and I process the dream with the fact that I didn’t want to be a teacher anymore. I felt like that was another sense of grief I had to contest with. Who was I going to be if I wasn’t a teacher? What did I want to be?

A librarian?

A writer?

A banker?

I don’t know.

And it’s terrifying not knowing all over again, but also more scary to stay in a job that has taken everything from me and that I just don’t enjoy anymore. My passion for teaching has extinguished so much that the wicker is gone. I don’t know when or if I’ll ever feel the same about teaching, but I feel like I’ve been so close to the flame, I’m so tried of burning only to be left with nothing left of me. I just don’t think it’s something I can keep doing for a long time if this is how I feel now, how I feel every day. But I also really don’t know what would come next. I don’t think I can take the next steps of resigning unless I have something lined up after that will give me financial stability. I think of resigning often enough that I want to, but I just don’t know how or don’t feel brave enough to do so. I worked so hard to be where I am to live this dream, but I don’t know if this dream is the dream anymore or the dream has turned into a living nightmare I need to wake up from.

Nothing is wrong with changing careers or realizing that something is not for you, but I don’t know what else is there for me if I am not a teacher. I feel like many people like myself intertwine their job with their identity that they don’t know who they are without that job; I have intertwined my identity with teaching so much growing up because that’s who I always saw myself as that I don’t see other jobs being something that I would enjoy.

Who can I be?

It all really comes back to that question, doesn’t it?

I don’t know what it is about being twenty-five that feels like you’re starting all over again.

Or maybe that is just because we are actually adults now after being in our twenties for a while, that we start to change so much to become the person we were meant to be—-that we were given time in our early twenties to figure out how to become an adult, and feel confident in ourselves, and then mid-twenties, we are tried with who we actually are. Not a midlife crisis per say, but a mid-life actualizaiton.

Who do we want to be?

What kind of person can we become?

What work gives us passion? Freedom? Creativity?

What makes us excited?

What do we value?

What do we actually want?

As someone who has always put others wants above my own, the last question is something I’ve been trying to ask myself more of.

At the end of the day, all I really want now is to do what I love with the people I love, and to feel more peace and happiness as possible. I want to feel like I’m doing things that make me excited. I want to feel safe in the places I go or with the people I am with.

After losing most of the people I loved last year, I really feel like I have had no one except my close circle, which is more than I could ever ask for. I just really miss being with people I love and seeing them to know how they are doing—-to be part of their life. I really miss them, but I can’t see them or don’t see them/have a reason to anymore because they were never mine to be with for a long time or for however long I was supposed to be with them. But I still love them. It’s hard when you love people you miss. All that longing to be together again really emphasized to me just how much I now value wanting to be with people I love, like truly and deeply love. How much the right people matter and how we should spend as much time with those people as we can because we never really know when the last time will be—when you have to leave or they leave you. Being away from my loved ones taught me how life does not feel full without the people who make you feel loved and who you love—how invaluable it is to have people to love and to be loved by them. I wish more than anything to be with those I love every day because I feel like my heart has never been the same since being away from them. The way I have loved or lack of loved has been because of the absence of the love I lost.

Love has become synonymous with loss.

“It’s hard to love something from a heavy place.”

-lfhokulani

I want to feel more peace and happiness as possible.

I don’t expect to feel happy every day because that’s not realistic, especially with the mental health battles I carry. But as much as possible, I want to be happy again. People say you chose to be happy, and I do agree with that sentiment—happiness is a choice. But happiness is also a mindset. As someone who struggles with depression, happiness being a mindset is easier said than done. It’s not that I don’t want to be happy, it’s just really hard for me to feel that way or to get to a place where I fully feel that joy. For some people, they get a new pet, and they are easily excitable and jumping or raving about how happy they are. For people like me, we get a new pet, and we are excited for the moment and then the next moment we’re worried about how we are going to take care of the pet, if we can afford the new pet, what will change with a new pet—we go down a spiral, and that spiral pulls us under to dark places. Then it becomes being happy to get a new pet, but also being anxious, sad, uncomfortable not because we’re not happy or excited, but because we have all these other feelings that become louder and it makes that joy feel like the smallest part of the emotion. I want my joy to feel louder than my crying sadness.

I want to hear and feel that joy in my body as much as possible and enjoy that feeling when I do feel it fully.

I want to feel more peace.

I feel like this peace will come from a break, or a much needed change. That change might be a career change, a school change, a grade change, but something needs to change. The way I’ve been working these past few years is not sustainable, nor is it something I want anymore. I really feel stuck in not knowing what to do or what comes next, which has greatly contributed to my lack of peace. When I make the change or something changes, I hope that it brings the much needed ease to my heart that I have been craving for years. I just want to be able to come home early or come home, sit down and not feel like I’m crumpling to the ground because my body physically feels such a weight that I don’t want to stand up. I want to feel exercise and feel like I’m not battling an uphill current coursing through my body because I’m that tense and exhausted. I want to feel peace in my body to feel fluid movement and not like the movement is overtaking me. I want to be able to rest my head on the pillow without the tangles of my mind cinching me in to the point my mind can’t breathe and I can’t sleep. I want the tangles to loosen and become nothing but the outlines of beautiful images that shape my dreams. I want to be able to sit down without feeling like I need to get ahead of my work or do something else that needs to get done—to rest without the need to do more. I want to be able to read a book in one sitting or for an extended period of time to really marinate in the images of the world created in someone’s head, coming to fruition in mine. I want to be able to sit on my hobbled chair at my makeshift kitchen table desk to edit and write stories that are part of the tangle of my mind. I want to be able to think creatively without feeling guilt tapping on my shoulder.

I want to be able to breath easily—to take in a moment, live it, and enjoy it while I can as. much as I can.

I want to do something that makes me happy.

When I first started working, I laugh at myself now, but I remember telling myself how much I love what I did—-that I would do what I did for free because my job didn’t feel like work. I look back and think about how I wished that same love for my brother, sister, everyone because I felt sad that so many people go through life hating their job that they do for the majority of their life. Go figures, huh? That’s why it matters to me more than ever now that I do something I love because I don’t want to be the person who hates their job and does the very thing they hate the rest of their life only to regret not doing something differently to change that—again with something needs to change. I’m still battling the thought if I hate my job, hate the place, or hate the position I am or maybe a mix of all three. But a deeper part of me believes that I still love what I do because there was a time and place I loved teaching, and not everyday I have taught has sucked. If I were to say out of this whole school year, maybe three days have not sucked (three out of fifty isn’t a great percentage though). Nevertheless, that still means something to me. On the other hand, if it’s more bad than good, that also is telling me something. In my heart I know what I want, and I am going to try and see what happens, and if things don’t work out, I really am going to take the next steps seriously to do a potential career shift. I contemplate a side job where I don’t have to take work home while I work on what truly makes me happy.

I always wanted to be a writer. It’s been really hard to find time as an adult to write.

If I could do any dream job, it would be to tell stories—to tell stories that change lives or touch people the same way stories had the power to do so over me.

I will always be indebted to the comfort of a good book.

I wrote this last year, which I believe is a testament to how I’m still trying to find this quality around me, but mostly within me is safety.

I want to be around people who make me feel emotionally, mentally, and physically safe.

I never fully realized how much of a my childhood I never felt safe emotionally, mentally, or physically—how much I had to fear. My experience was just my childhood and that was just the way I lived—surviving the blows was my normal. I got used to wincing at any loud noise or raised voice. I got accustomed to hiding in my room or a closet when I heard the whispered shouts or untamed yells. I was raised to look at each expression, to feel the stiffness in the silences at dinner tables or car rides, to decipher all the unsaid things between every family member. I grew up walking around moods, diffusing emotional bombs, always making sure I was going to be okay—I was going to make it through. But that’s not really growing up, is it? That’s survival. Not even survival of the fittest, just plain survival.

I was just trying to get by.

Arguably, being twenty-five has felt like trying to survive the worst year of my life and trying to understand what comes after that. Being twenty-five has meant getting through each day, wondering when the next good day or good thing will happen as some reprieve. This age didn’t feel like being in the storm, but living in the aftermath, which sometimes can be a lot worse.

It’s seeing the wreckage, and not really knowing where to start. Sometimes it’s battling the part of me that doesn’t even want to deal with all the damage because it feels too overwhelming in my mind, and I just want to give up. The other part of me knows that I have gotten myself through some of my worst days, and I can clean up all the chaos around me. It will take time, just like all the other times I have been left to pick up the pieces. But there will be a day that my environment won’t feel like a mess. Sometimes after a storm, it’s not really having a place to go anymore, or not really knowing what place feels like home. I’ve lived in the same new place for about over a year now, but I don’t know if it will ever feel like home. More so just a stepping stone while I build my foundation so I can build a new home for myself.

The hardest part of any aftermath is the pieces.

So many fragments, shards, ruins.

So many pieces that belonged to somewhere or someone, with no where to go anymore.

No matter if we can pick up the pieces, nothing can ever be put together the same way again.

No one really talks about how difficult it is to break, and put those pieces together to find some sort of version of yourself. Because when something brakes, that thing will never fully be like what it was before. And that’s another sort of heartbreak altogether.

“It’s like my heart is trapped in heartbreak

A special cage I placed the pieces in

Not wanting to be hurt by the world anymore

But also feeling stuck in the places that hurt to be

But I don’t know where else to place a broken heart

Where do you place the pieces?”

-lfhokulani

I wrote this in my letter to a twenty-four-year-old about how grief is like a rock you carry for the rest of your life. The rock feels heavy at first because it’s a huge weight, and then the rock feels lighter because you learned to carry the grief with you. The grief will always be with you, but you are stronger to carry that grief so that it doesn’t always feels so heavy. I’m starting to believe that losing yourself is similar. You have all these shattered pieces that you try to save that you carry in your pocket with you. They feel like an overwhelming amalgamation—a puzzle—for you to solve. Each day you work on this puzzle, but the pieces don’t quite fit, but you realize that you have to break off certain pieces to make things fit or that you have to move certain pieces to different places because it doesn’t fit the same where you thought it would be. And slowly the image forms again, but it’s not what it was, it’s something new, and that image is you. That image is still parts of you that you will always carry with you, they just fit within you a little differently because you are different.

You are not going to be the same person after life changes you or you change with life.

And that’s okay if the picture isn’t what you thought it was because at the end of the day, it’s still always, always going to be a masterpiece worth loving, admiring because of just how much time and care it took to put that image back together.

I hope one day soon, I can see that image in actualization and be proud of the person who made it out on the other side of all these grievous years. I hope I can be proud of the person I see. I know I will be.

It just has been really hard to see the other side of all this pain and confusion right now because I feel like I’m in the thick of the frustration of when you solve a puzzle—where you know what the image looks like and you’re trying your darnest to make everything work and nothing is working or it feels like the picture will never be completed. I’m at the point where I don’t know what to do next to make the pieces fit—stuck with my head in my hands, wondering what to do.

I feel so lost.

Not just within myself, but where and what I feel like I should be, which is a grievance I don’t know if it’s universal for people my age or just myself.

I feel so loss.

I don’t always want to feel like fragments or like the wheezing inhale of a breathe.

I want to be able to say I did it, I made it. I won.

That I did not lose everything.

And I see the small wins from petting my first goat this year to riding a freaking horse. I always wanted to ride a horse for some reason, and this year I rode a horse in the year of the horse. I survived one of my worst school years, and getting through my honest-to-gosh worstest school year. I cooked a new beef meal my brother would always make, but I made. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but my goal was to cook a new meal and I cooked a new meal, so I’ll take that as a win for myself. I read more books this year than when I started last year, which I love love love reading and I feel like it’s because I’ve been in a bit of a healthier headspace to want to read. I wrote another freaking manuscript this year!!!!

It’s been about six years since I last wrote a full on manuscript for a novel I’ve been working on. I didn’t even remember the last manuscript I wrote until I looked at my previous works and was like, “What I wrote that?!” But I wrote! I was petrified to write again because it’s been so long and I’ve been through so many experiences that has shaped my lack of reading experience, which I feel like has affected the way I write. I also feel like as I get older I’m getting dumber because I’m not intaking as much knowledge as I really wish I could. I did it though, I sat in front of my computer this summer and I wrote a manuscript that has been in my head for the past year. It was incredibly difficult to plan out this book because it was more complex and vulnerable than the other manuscripts I’ve wrote. Also, some scenes were really intense to write and took me to a very heavy place, but I’m very glad I wrote the emotions that have been living within me for so long. It felt truly therapeutic and cathartic to finally release all that I have been feeling or certain experiences I couldn’t explain through me, but could explain through story-telling—the magic of words. One day when this book is published because I know this book should be published, I’m going to look back and be incredibly grateful that I wrote it even when it was hard. I’m proud that I challenged myself to write something personal and different, and no, it’s not going to be everyone’s favorite book or an easy book to read, but it’s my book and it’s a story I think many people, unfortunately, could relate to. I’m excited for the book’s future, and really want to edit and query it—all the things.

Sometimes pain can turn into poetry. Sometimes pain can turn into our best work.

Someone once said too that depression needs expression, and I genuinely agree with that.

I also did the most unhinged thing I could do as a twenty-five-year-old.

Built of broken promises and false hope four years ago, but really a decade in the making, I always wanted a dog.

But something’s happened where that hope was taken away from me, and utterly broke my heart.

It always felt like people would tell me I couldn’t get a dog, or that it would never be the right time because I’m always at work. But everyone saying no or that’s it’s not the right time, always felt like a never. I was so tired of having my heart broken and tired of feeling like everything I wanted was never going to happen.

As someone who is a huge dreamer, many things I dreamt of as a kid isn’t what happened as an adult.

This is the second dream I’m making come true for myself because I want it too.

I finally am going to adopt a corgi.

I adopted a corgi puppy on November 1, 2026 and going to pick up my future best friend on November 25 before Thanksgiving.

I can’t even express how I teared up seeing the puppies on the website after so many countless years, looking at this website and never seeing the puppies there like it was never the right time or like there were no more puppies. But this was the first time I saw the puppies, I just felt like it had to be this time. I messaged the lady, and she sent me two pictures of the corgi puppies left and the second puppy picture felt like the dog I have been waiting for. I asked to visit the puppies, and when I held the second puppy, my heart belonged to it. I could not say no to this puppy, this puppy was going to be my heart. He has the chonkiest little face with the softest black and brown fur, and the cutest little pink paws that felt like touching leather. He was like a bundle of warmth sitting on my lap with his little pink tongue hanging out. Holding my corgi puppy was everything and more than I could ever wanted or dreamed of. I truly had the intent of not getting the puppy and waiting for the next litter the lady had, but I could not. This puppy was mine.

I’m going to be a dog mom!

A dream that’s finally coming true.

I though being twenty-five would be rebuilding, but being twenty-five felt more like surviving, which is what I guess you do after your life was in upheaval for so long. You have to learn how to live again. You have to learn the basic needs of what you need again to take care of yourself.

You have to take care of yourself.

I really do hope that being twenty-six will feel like rebuilding all that broke—all the pieces I’m still trying to put back together.

Sometimes I forget the strength I’ve built is

still there even when it crumbles

There’s still a foundation there

That will hold me up when I break

Even when my whole world shakes

My foundation is still there.

I wrote this in my letter to my twenty-three-year-old self, which I felt is fitting to serve as a reminder for future me when I read this.

That as broken as I’ve felt being twenty-five, that I still have the pieces and I still have a foundation. I’m not entirely broken.

I’m finding out who I can be.

I’m rebuilding. I’m rediscovering. I’m regrouping. I’m starting over again.

I hope twenty-six is when I have the courage to actually get up and do more for myself than what this last year has felt like so I can rebuild and rediscover rather than figure out how to keep going. I have a feeling that being a dog mom and contemplating the changes I want to make, which is a big deal as someone who detests change, is going to help me find where I truly need to be and who I truly want to be. I’m so tired of carrying the weight or living for others, that as I move into being twenty-six, I’m giving myself the permission to put the weight down.

Girl, you don’t need to carry the earth. It’s smushing you. It’s leaving your shoelaces untied so much you can’t take care of yourself. Put the world down. Take care of yourself. The world will be there, and it will be okay if you set it down for a while or for a long time because it was never your job to uphold the universe. Your job was to live, and to do your best, but you have been so focused on making sure everything and everyone is okay that you haven’t really gotten the chance to live or have fun when you were working arduously to upkeep the one thing you thought would break at the slip of your fingers. You do not have to carry the world. Let the world carry you. Let the world down. Let other people help you carry that weight if you need to.

I don’t want you to be Atlas as a twenty-six-year old.

I hope that you get off the hamster wheel too, and know that you don’t always have to be on or chasing all the endless things in your overworked, exhausted mine. Step off the wheel too. It’s making you ever more exhausted with all the bubbles in your head of things you already know you can do, but don’t need to do all at once. The worst thing that can truly happen if you get off that wheel is that the wheel stops spinning and the list gets bigger, but you also get rest. And I think you need that more than you need to keep going because one day you are going to crash on that wheel and it’s going to hurt more than you think it will. I think the crash is coming soon.

I hope you find more love for yourself than you ever know. You really deserve it. You work so hard and give everything to what you do because it matters to you. Please put that same love and care into yourself. I know love has not always found you the way you wanted it to, but never close yourself off to knowing that one day there will be a person who sees you for you and wants to know you for you. I trust and believe that that kind of storybook love is out there, and that you just have to actually go out there to find that. I know it’s been difficult these past few years to want to go out there because going out feels tiresome, but I hope having a puppy and hopefully some semblance of peace and change in the next year will give you the time and space to finally focus on the part of your life that needs love. I hope love finds you in more friendships with people who have similar interests as you, with family members who actually care, and with people you love and can reconnect with.

I know you are going to be the best dog mom even when you are tired and overwhelmed. Having a puppy will be good for you because you always felt so alone, and when you saw a dog, your smile would instantly overtake your whole body. You need another best friend who can comfort you, and will be there to amplify that joy or sleep by you in your silence. You’re going to have your life friend, and I’m so, so excited for you, I can’t even explain it. You have wanted a corgi for soooo long that it’s felt impossible like everything else you want. And you did it. You are making the dream come true just like you did before. There will be new dreams to have and to make come true, but enjoy every moment with your puppy because they won’t always stay a puppy. Find love again, and something to love with him.

I hope you experience new things, maybe with new people. Go on the Europe trip because that’s another dream you always wanted. Go see the world beyond where you come from because there’s so much more to life and this world than the places that you feel stuck in and stuck in that hurt. Maybe even go to Japan, or a different state, heck, Disneyland. Go out into the world, and see different people, eat different food, let the world be the place you feel like you have a place in rather than the place you hold up. Maybe setting the world down will allow you to see just how big the world is, and just how much there is to discover.

I hope you don’t let change scare you as much anymore, but learn to go with it. Gosh knows, we know that you’re never truly ready for something and that life can change quickly. I have always loathed change, and I still think I do. However, I want you to know that whatever happens or whatever you decide to do next, that you have already done some of the hardest things and most uncomfortable changes, and you’re still here. Maybe you’re not completely okay, but you’re here and you’re trying. Don’t let the change change how you see yourself. You can absolutely get through any of the changes with your strength and gentleness, and the people who make you feel stronger. Change is scary, but you faced it before. You can again and again and again until the changes only feel natural, like something you can do because you chose to.

My greatest hope for you is that when you look back at this letter next year is that the world continues to feel less heavier each day and that you feel more clarity as to who you are. I already know you have a great heart that’s buried beneath all your sorrow, stress, and hurt, and I know that one day it will come out again because you have found the right people to make you feel safe and loved to not feel so heavy inside. And no, I don’t think that’s anyone’s responsibility to make sure you’re okay inside but our own responsibility, but hopefully with the help of people around you who can show you unconditional love, that those parts of yourself will shine again. They are there. They fit somewhere, and one day you will feel it and see it, and those pieces will be the greatest part of the masterpiece. I hope you laugh more like you used to, use that sarcastic snark you learned from the greatest novels, and speak and do things with passion and love because you have so much within you. You have everything you need already inside, you just have to put it together again, and when you do, she’ll be there as she always has.

Sure, she looks different, but she’s there. Always has, and always will be.

I know life has sucked these past few years, so this is my wish to you: I hope something beautiful happens for you, and that there are more beautiful things to come

Happiest birthday and to many more,