My letter to Nobody

Dear Old Friend,

         In fifty two days, I'll be turning seventeen years old, and in four-hundred-and-seventeen days, I'll turn eighteen years old, and suddenly I'm not so excited.

What if I'm not ready? F**k, I know I'm not. I'm scared that I won't be successful, that I'll be nothing of any kind of importance to the world. I want to save the world, change it, show people a new, more forgiving way of life.  I want to be somebody important, someone that in a hundred years people will still talk about me, and all the wonderful things I did for the world; but I know that won't happen.

           I know someday the photographs we take will all just be photographs to look back on, I know someday that guy I had a crush on in my second period will be someones dad, and that someday soon I'll graduate high school, and all of the times I cried over my grades won't matter anymore. Someday all of these things are just going to be memories, just things I did and saw when I was young, just stories for my kids; But unfortunately right now my life is at that, 'almost-considered-an-adult-but-not-quite' phase, where I'm not considered a child anymore, and let me tell you, it isn't what I hoped it would be. 

          Now, before you go off on judging me, let me explain why I have such a strong sense of trepidation on this particularly frustrating subject. The older I've gotten, the less shelter I got from the world. Don't misconstrue this as me bashing my parents, no, no, no. I'm glad they were so open, and patient with me about the way the world works, the way life works. My parents made sure they raised me with a sense of the world, with a sense to understand there really is more out there. Billions of people I haven't met, trillions of things I've never seen in different places, and along with that beautiful realization, another follows.

         This other not-so-great realization is this, all around the world, there are at least a couple billion people out there, all with their own stories, lives, families, and dreams. All around the world, right at this second, someone died, someone else was born. Somewhere, a gun was shot, a bomb went off, a baby cried, a spouse lied, a family member died, a girl got her first kiss, someone else just got married. The world, is in all honesty, is bipolar; Manically, crazily, annoyingly, bipolar. It's insane to believe for millions of years, people have always put up with similar, or worse.

          The world scares me, but mostly, what's happening in it. Bombs go off, men murdering children in Germany over power, guns everywhere, war threatening to make a blood-curdling appearance again. I'm afraid of the world, but at the same time, I want to see it all. I want to go to Egypt, and see the pyramids one day, I want to go to Australia and swim along the coral reef before it dies, changing history forever. 

       Dear friend, in my short sixteen years and three hundred and thirteen days in this world, I have seen, I feel, some of the biggest changes, tragedies, and breakthroughs in the world. David Bowie died, Michael Jackson too, we discovered water on the moon, there was the first female Chancellor in Germany, so many blighting terrorist attacks. The list goes on and on old friend, and I confide these private thoughts to you, to make you see, the world is a calamitous, devastatingly beautiful place, full of pros and cons for you to determine all on your own. 

Dear friend, I ask you listen to me and take my advice, pay attention to the world, embrace it. Don't hide, don't shrink into yourself in fear, hoping for the best if you keep your life sheltered and quiet.

Don't hide fear the world friend, embrace it. 

Carpe diem, seize the day, always my love.

May the road rise to meet you,

N.C.P.