Went through an old journal and found this letter I wrote to my future self when I was 19, around this time 6 years ago.
I am writing this at 12:17pm on February 26, 2014, 7 days after my clavicle reconstruction surgery. I am 19 years old. I am writing this to myself.
I have no plans for you. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, and with whom you are doing it, is fine. You could be successful or lonely or on the street and none of these things would surprise or disappoint me. Even the vague hopes I have now, I understand enough of the world to know that experience may very well render those desires irrelevant. I know that now, and I am content with that. Your life may have taken a direction I never in my wildest dreams could have foreseen, and that is great! My knowledge, my perspective is so finite, do not seek to pacify me as I am now. The moment in which I am writing this will have passed, and with it my self in this moment will be dead. Never to see, never to know another thing. But you, in the present, are so full of life lived and foods tasted that I could not have imagined! And it is the knowledge that you are not as finite as me, that you will change and grow beyond my limitations, that makes it so I have not died in vain.
So do not fixate on me. Behind you is death and in front of you is new life and infinite possibility! Already at 19 I have spent years fixated on the idea that I did not turn out as a younger me would have imagined. At 19! Do you see how ridiculous and hopeless this idea is? So this is me, trying to relieve myself by relieving you. Unfortunately I have no idea where you are or what you are doing with your life now, so I have no insight or guidance to offer you. You know yourself better than I do. I do not know you, we have never met. I am merely a piece of you, shaken off like antlers in the fall while you carry on. New ones will grow in the spring, and they will be bigger and stronger, so do not mourn for me. You will lose nothing I had, and gain so much more. My only desires for myself are to grow, and I’m sure you’ve got that covered.
Be strong. Be kind.
Yours in memory,
Lane Silas Patriquin
Capricorn Rising 