One True Thing, Despite it All

A while ago, I was invited to participate in a project that involved writing to your teen self. The project is called "Dear Teen Me."

I said yes. I had already written a letter to my writer self, and it was a great exercise. In looking back and realizing how things got better, I felt like I could offer that hope to other writers.

But with this new exercise, for some reason, every time I started to write a letter to my teen self, I stopped. Because every time I thought about that kid, I thought about all the warnings I wanted to scream at her. Sure, some were a little funny, but mostly they felt like life or death. And it was just a reminder to me that I couldn't go back. I couldn't save the people I knew who died too young. I couldn't prevent my family's pain or anyone else's. So what was the point?

Yesterday, our dear friend lkmadigan shared the heartbreaking news that she has cancer. Lisa and I have never met, but we've known each other here on LiveJournal for years and years. We celebrated our first sales together. We celebrated our first books, and then our second books, together. I've cried over her posts and she's cried over mine. We've offered each other advice about writing and about life. And a few years ago, Lisa began the now popular and heartwarming "Thankful Thursday" tradition here. Lisa is a good person. A good friend. And once again I hear the useless phrase in my head we all scream when someone we love is hurting. It's not fair!

What can we do for Lisa?

It reminds me again of the letter to myself exercise. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we really could go back in time and warn the people we love to do this thing or that thing that we think might change their course. Save them.

But we can't.

And as I wrote that letter to my teen self, it was something I finally had to accept. And it hurt. Life is funny. That's what I wrote. And sometimes life is brutally cruel. Sometimes, the hurt feels unbearable. But life, when we are living it with all of that in mind, when we are just spending a fleeting moment looking across the table at someone we love, we realize the most important thing of all: Life is beautiful.

This Thankful Thursday as I hold Lisa in my heart, I'm grateful for that one realization. That one true thing.

Today, Dear Teen Me published my essay. You can read it here.

Thank you. To all of you. For helping put beauty in my life, and so many others.