🧵Thursday Thread: “The useless days will add up to something" ~Cheryl Strayed
🧵Thursday Thread: “The useless days will add up to something" ~Cheryl Strayed
Let's say you could reach through the years to your younger self. What would you say to comfort, encourage, forewarn that tender and possibly confused human? What, if anything, would you withhold?
Hi, Friends!
I loved our thread on risks last week! You made me laugh out loud and you made me cry (both happy and sad tears). You gave me shivers and you inspired me to try to live even more fully. It was so damn beautiful. The whole Threads series has been a beacon.
This week, let’s share our own version of letters to a young poet, except the poet is us. And don’t have to write poetry, either, unless we want to.
The headline on this post is excerpted, of course, from Cheryl Strayed’s Tiny Beautiful Things, in which she wrote a letter to her own younger self, saying, among other very beautiful (and not-tiny-at-all) things, this:
The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.
So what would I say to my younger self, as pictured in the 2011 computer selfie at the top of this post (remember photo booth?).
I was trying my best to look pretty, to be pretty, trying to be serious and ready and worthy, too, as I started NaNoWriMo for the first time. A week (and about thirty not-very-good pages) later, I spilled a full cup of tea on my laptop keyboard, wrecked the computer, and lost those pages forever. There went that year’s NaNoWriMo.
So, what would I want to tell that earnest younger self, the one who was so desperate to finally write her book, who was so scared of being a big faker and not having the chops to get from start to finish? Maybe something like this:
Be soft with yourself. Forty-two isn’t as old as you think. Your nest isn’t even empty yet. And your son won’t go to treatment for another few years. Yes, you’ll survive that, and be better for it, but you won’t be able to write your book until he comes home. That’s okay. Be where you are for now. He needs you more than you know. You need you, too. Anyway, it won’t be the book you spilled tea on. You’ll come back to that one a decade later. First, you’ll have to scrape a much older book from inside your own bones. It will hurt. But you’ll survive that, too—even the hardest parts I can’t tell you now because you’re not ready. You’ll begin to understand when you pick up Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye again to re-read it, because you’ll start remembering that strange love you’ve been missing since you abandoned fiction and poetry for self-help. Take Cat’s Eye with you on your long walks by the river and read it as the acorns pelt the ground. People will look over their shoulders at you, yes, but keep reading, keep walking, keep remembering. You know this path. Keep going.
What I won’t tell her is how severely she will be punished for the book she must write, and how much that punishment will hurt her. I won’t tell, because she won’t write if she knows—and she must write that book to live. I also won’t tell her about the grandchildren who will arrive in the next decade, alongside her book, or her sweet pup Frannie, or all of you, because even though she’s shy of surprises, she likes happy ones and hasn’t had enough of them. She is going to be so amazed.
Okay, your turn! What would you tell your younger self? What might you withhold? No need to make it fancy or writerly, by the way. Say it any old way you wish.
I will be honored to receive your letters to your former selves, and I’ll be here in the comments today, reading and cherishing.