From Your Older Self

To the Younger Me,

It's the older me writing to you.

Oh, how my handwriting has changed. I'm writing to you with a sense of longing, wishing I have that young energy flowing through my veins. I wish you appreciate the fact that you have medicine-free cabinets, cane-free walks, and doctor-less calendars, but this is not what this letter is really about.

This is a letter of appreciation , thanking you for all the right choices you've made. I know you've had some hard ones. I know you've given up many things over the years, and I want to let you know that you truly haven't given up anything; you've just exchanged the good things for the better things and I promise I can't describe to you how much better.

You know how I know? Because I'm living in hindsight; I'm living with the guys you were jealous of, the guys you were trying to imitate, they guys you thought were living the highlife, but now live like low-lives and I want to thank you.

Thank you for pushing against the endless tide forever fighting against you. Thank you for climbing the mountains though your friends laughed and smoked down in the valley, drunk with the stupidities of life. Thank you for jumping between the drops of rain though at times it felt like a hurricane. Thank you for investing in a future you never dreamed you'll have. Thank you for not being them. Thank you for or being you, for sticking to the cold hard truth though it was cold and hard because I'm telling you, you don't want to live the life your friends are living now.

Half of them are gone.

The valleys of their youth are now giant pits of quicksand, pulling them down down down... Their life is an endless hurricane....their life is shoddy tent flapping in the winds, struggling to keep up.

But I... I... it's as if I've been building this insulated cocoon for years, wrapping myself with years of hard-core values and faith that now stand like iron pillars supporting me through this wonderful life.

And it's thanks to you. It's thanks to you that I have medicine-filled cabinets and a caned-walks because the other guys don't want to live. The other guys can't walk. They don't go to doctors, they lay helplessly in hospitals.

I wish I can show you the horror life of living with guilt. The horror life I've knowing you wasted the best years. The horror life of living every minute knowing you could have done better. You could have been just as strong as your peers.

I wish I can speed up the years for you to see me flourishing under old age, living at peace with the decisions I've made and the paths of chosen. I wish I can show you the kids I've raised, the results of sleepless nights and tear-filled, praying years. I wish I can show you my smiling grandkids, asking for yet another candy, and the warm feeling inside as my shaking fingers curl around their smooth excited ones.

I wish I can speed up your life to the fruits of your labor and then rewind it so you can work in happiness, toil in peace, knowing that all the things you're standing up for will stand up for you in the future. The tides you're pushing against are the tides that will hold you strong....

Oh my hands hurt... but I can't stop writing. I need you know how thankful I am and how excited I am to see you in future.... please keep strong... keep fighting...