March 2011.
I'm a month late.
My apologies to past me. I'll try ensure that this version of me is less expectant of future me's time-keeping abilities.
My good man were it you knew then what you would find yourself facing mere months after writing. The adversity you would discover as you turned that corner and made-real the vast swathes of thorny thickets strewn before you. There is no advice I could give you now to make the journey easier spare this: do not lose yourself along the way. Because I promise you there are times where you will question everything you have ever believed in and everything you stand for. By the end, you will barely serve as a reminder to the person you used to be. But so long as you still have that silouhette - that outline; that shadow of what you were, you will carry on.
There will be tremendous lows, my old friend. So low you will feel as though you're sipping from the Styx itself. As though you're keeping a penny in your back pocket just incase the Boatman will come a-visiting this day. But somehow you'll get through each day. Quite often it'll be thrashing and wailing; howling and tearing. Every night you will shackle yourself to the last of your sanity in the most paternal of hopes that you won't lose it. You will become the Shawshank that surrounds you but you won't be Andy.
I wish I could say to you now that things will improve ten-fold one year on. They will improve, you will always have that speck of light, but they won't be...resolved? Yes, that's possibly the best word to use. Know now that I still struggle with the same spectres you will shortly allbeit I've found a little more rigor along the way. My eyes are sunken and my cheeks are hollow but God knows I haven't forgotten what determination tastes like. You think you have a few gray hairs now? Give it time.
I'm writing now in a way I know you'll appreciate. You and I, we've always been the same. Trying hard to convince ourselves each and every step that we have the confidence and bearing to overcome all odds, to thwart all adversity and to slay all menial working-class dragons. But you'll also know I'm a dreadful cynic and horrible satirist. You and I, my friend, we are in a nutshell, Fucked. With a capital F. But who didn't ever get back up from a good fucking? Bandy legged and dizzy as hell, we'll make our way to the bathroom, sit down on that chilly seat and smile stupidly to ourselves, pondering "Was it real?"
I think importantly you want to know why I'm writing to you anyways. It's all well and good in that the style i'm writing to you in is a familiar one, but why am I even bothering in the first place? Because right now I am giving you the heads-up and the strength and fortitude that I could seriously do with at this point in the old continuum. People will always sit there in the background with their own agendas - preoccupied with their own feelings and happenstance. We can't blame them because we simply aren't allowed to. It's the joy of being human. Everyone has their own little garden to tend to. Why should they give up their one and only rake because you need it for a couple of weeks? And yea your grasp of metaphors hasn't transpired to anything fantastical over the past 13 months either.
Be strong my little brother. You are going to suffer like nothing else, but you be strong and you don't forget that I'll be here waiting for you in the end, arms stretched. We'll find a way through this together. Stay safe.
Love
Andrew
