Dear Future Me,
You’re 42 now.
I wonder where you’re sitting when you read this.
Maybe at a kitchen table in a quieter house. Maybe somewhere rural, where the windows are open and the night sounds different. Maybe the boys are bigger than I can currently imagine. Maybe one of them towers over you now, stealing food from your fridge and disappearing into his own life in little pieces at a time.
I hope you finally bought furniture you actually liked instead of just accepting what worked.
I hope the air around you feels lighter.
Right now, at 37, life feels like standing in a doorway with boxes in both arms. Not fully in the old life anymore. Not fully inside the next one either. Just… suspended there. Trying. Exhausted. Hopeful. Scared.
I need to know something.
Did we make it somewhere better?
Not perfect. I’m old enough to know life was never going to become perfectly neat and easy. But better. Did the constant pressure ease? Did we stop feeling like survival was a group project balanced entirely on our spine?
I hope you learned to rest without guilt.
I hope you stopped apologizing for needing reassurance.
I hope you stopped measuring your worth by productivity, clean rooms, completed lists, and how useful you are to other people.
I hope you kept writing.
Even if the blog changed. Even if the numbers stayed small. Even if nobody fully understood why documenting ordinary life mattered so much to you. I hope you kept doing it anyway. Those stories were never just stories. They were proof you were here.
I hope the boys still let you into their worlds sometimes.
I hope Caleb still surprises you with his quiet depth.
I hope Holden still makes you laugh at inappropriate moments like a tiny chaos goblin with excellent comedic timing.
I hope you kept movie nights. Even after they acted too cool for them.
And what about love?
Did you finally stop trying to earn it by overextending yourself? Did love finally feel like somewhere you could rest instead of something you had to constantly protect?
I think, deep down, what I want most for you is not success.
Not money.
Not a smaller body.
Not even the dream house in the country.
I want you to feel settled inside your own life.
I want you to wake up one ordinary Tuesday and realize the panic quieted. That your body no longer feels like it’s bracing for impact every second of the day.
And if things didn’t unfold the way we hoped?
I hope you survived that too.
Because that’s the thing about us. We always do.
Love,
Me, age 37
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