Closure

My 8th grade teacher came to my high school graduation and with her, one of the things she brought to give me was my class journal from 8th gradeThe other thing she brought, was a letter I wrote to myself during the last week of school in 8th grade. We all had journals and we all wrote letters to ourselves that last week of school, and most of us said we wanted her to keep them both and give them back to us after we graduate.  

I never forgot about that letter, and I can't lie, over the years I've actually really wondered what I wrote to myself all that time ago...

After graduation, with my family around the dinner table, I fianlly opened that letter. It was shorter than I remembered, for one. That was my first surprise haha. My next surpsise was that oddly enough, I realized that some way, some how, I had actually accomplished everything I'd wanted for myself. I was actually kind of stunned by that. 

I read the letter aloud to my family and then I went through and explained that I'd actually done everything on it...

1: "I want to be successful in High School."
~I'm Valedictorian. Nuff said haha. ✅~

2: "Make new friends."
~Granted I didn't make the kind of new friends I thought I would, but I did in fact make a lot of new friends. Most are adults, some are doctors, and I'm friends with my teachers too. It still counts though haha. Also, not to mention my two best friends who I met online. They've stuck with my for 2 years now!✅~

3: "Try new things."
~I started playing guitar. That's a new thing. I started writing a lot, blogging, and have all sorts of new hobbies. ✅~

4: "Find something that inspires me."~I got so much more into music once I started playing it and I found so much inspriation in music. Just overall, I've found inspriation in my life and my situation, and I found a way to channel the negatives in my life into positive things. I let myself find inspriation in every situation, good or bad. No matter what, I end up writing about it haha. I have inspiration up the wazoo now! (I really wanted to say wazoo haha.)✅✅~

5: "Have fun."~I definitly have fun! I learned to make the most of any situation. I laugh every day, no matter how bad. I laugh til I cry at least once a week too haha.✅~

6: "Live in the moment."~I lived one day at a time for years, and I still kinda do. I really appreciate the little things in life. I try not to take life or speical movements for granted. I try to soak up as much happiness from even just the tiniest of moments as I can get. Sometimes just one tiny positive thing from a day was all I would get. You learn to really appreciate little things when the little things are all you get.✅~

7: "Believe."~It's a broad one, but I like it. I always try my very best to belive in myself, trust my gut, and trust my strength. I belive in the ones I love. I belive that we all have a purpose... ✅~ 

8: "Dream big." ~In 8th grade, that used to be my motto, or montra, or whatever you want to call it. They were words I really believed in, and I can't lie, I did give up on those words for a while. I came back around to them though, and I still have a lot of the same big dreams I used to have. I'm not gonna let life stop me from dreaming big.✅~

9: "Don't give up."~I know when I wrote this letter back then, I meant this in a way of that you shouldn't give up on your big dreams. But reading it today, it had completely different meaning to me. It actually kind of choked me up when I read that one. I've never given up, deapite all I've been through, and I really have been through a lot. Just because I didn't give up though, didn't mean that I didn't want to give up. I know there were many times I was so sick and was so deeply depressed and miserable that I actually wished I wasn't so strong of a person. I wished I could give up, but I couldn't. I hit rock bottom, maybe a few times, and it's impossible for me to give up. For better or for worse, I'm a fighter and I can't give up.✅✅✅~

Ps. My lucky number is 9. No clue if I did that intentionally back then haha, but that's just super cool to me that there's 9 things. 

After telling my family that I accomplished all the things I'd wanted to, I also thought about how cool it was that I actually talked about all (or maybe just most) of those things in my graduation speech too. That was just crazy to me. 

I hesitated opening the letter at first, scared of that what I said back then may make me sad now. I was expecting it to be pretty bittersweet, but I was honestly just in awe. 

It amazed me, and the letter that I wrote to myself all those years ago was the true closure that I didn't even know I needed until I read it. 

❤️