A letter to Chelsea 10 years ago

Your last day of school is today and you’re graduating in a few days. Right now, you’re mainly focused on not tripping across the stage (you won’t, it’s fine). Later you’ll have a party and your favorite teacher from the seventh grade will show up with a relic of a school project from your middle school self and it will feel like it's so from long ago and make you cry.

You’re going to go to college and change your major at least seven times before finally settling on what your mom thought would be a good fit all along. She was right. She’s going to be right a lot. You’re going to struggle a lot as you try to find your place. There are going to be a lot of tears and feeling like you’re two steps behind everyone. On your 21st birthday, your friends will toss you into the fountain and you’ll climb to the top because you will have the cinematic college experience depression be damned.

A couple of years in everything will click. You’re going to meet some amazing people. You’re going to spend a lot of nights in a crappy bar with raccoons in the ceiling. One day you’ll accidentally transfer $10,000 you don’t have to your landlord and one friend will laugh and another will hold you as you cry. You’re going to cry some more when you fail precalc for a third time but then you’re going to go to your third class about Shakespeare and talking about “words, words, words” will make you feel alive.

You get a dream internship and spend a summer on the other side of the country and no one knows you and it's a good thing. And it’s a hard thing.

You move to San Francisco! I KNOW! You barely make rent the first year and your family sends you care packages and you bring home food from the work cafeteria because a burrito is like fifteen bucks. But it’ll be the best burrito so sometimes you’ll treat yourself anyways.

You get a place of your own that’s smaller than any college apartment you had. You’re incredibly proud. Meanwhile, your mom is incredibly worried. More amazing people come into your life. People who see you and love you so deeply. They’ll have you over for dinner and send your backpack home with all the leftovers. One time after a few too many drinks you’ll dump a Mcdonald's coke all over their white rug and they’ll tease you mercilessly and adoringly.

Every year you’re going to loosen up a little bit and take yourself a little less seriously. Eventually, you’ll patch up the chip you carved into your own shoulder. Friends will move in and out of your life like planets in orbit and sometimes you won’t believe how distant they’ve become. It’s okay. They’re going to come back around. And you’ll begin to forgive the ones that don’t, because you’ve lived just barely long enough to know that just because things are different doesn’t mean that things weren’t once real.

You’ll move to a nicer place right by the park. You go to the farmer’s market every Sunday, you pay eight bucks for juice, and occasionally partake in some yoga. I know, wild. A pandemic will come and you’ll be struck by both the callousness and the kindness of people. You’ll spend two years getting really comfortable in your own skin and mind. Sometimes you’ll kind of miss that time and will feel guilty for thinking such a thing. You’re still working on the whole guilt thing in therapy. I don’t know what to tell you there, we’re working on it.

You’re going to travel to so many beautiful places, and people are going to travel to see you. You get to share the life you’re building and the city you love. Your mom comes out to take care of you after you get the last of your wisdom teeth taken out, and the first thing you eat is a peach champagne sorbet and it’s almost a religious experience.

You tattoo an orange on your arm because you miss your home. It hurts on the plane home for Christmas and you don’t know if it hurts more to leave or to stay.

You come home to Florida.

It’s a good thing. It’s a hard thing. It’s the right thing.

Your dad gets really sick and you cry a lot over it. You bitterly wish you’d been less career-focused or independent or something and just gotten married and had a kid already because what if you now have to do that without him. You hold your mom’s hand in the hospital so tight that her wedding ring cuts your hand and you don’t mind.

Your brother saves his life.

On the same day your dad gets released from the hospital you get laid off. There was a time that would’ve destroyed you, and it still hurts but mostly you’re relieved.

You fall back in love with Florida. You buy a kayak and feed parts of your sandwich to the fish on the river. You get to spend more time with your family and drink gin on your friend’s porch every couple of weeks.

By all accounts, you’ve made it kid. You’ve accomplished things beyond what you could have dreamt walking across that stage sweating through your blue polyester robe. But looking back there isn’t one thing that you’re proudest of. The jobs, people, and money come and go.

I wish I could tell you there’s so much satisfaction in the little things. Being there when your friends get married. Seeing your friends become parents. Scooping leaves out of the pool and floating around to cool off while the cicadas buzz. There’s so much you’re going to do, and a lot more you won’t. It’s all going to be fine. You still stay up too late playing video games with your cousin. You still only really listen to The Mountain Goats. You have your high school dream car now which is pretty dang cool.

Tomorrow you might find a job, fall madly in love, or move again. Who knows. Isn’t that wonderful? Nobody knows. The journey is grand and it’s a charmed life, Schneider. Enjoy the next ten years, I’ll be enjoying mine. We’re going to be just fine.