The Letter I Wrote to Myself at Twenty-Five

I wrote a letter this morning, on a piece of cream-colored paper Diane gave me at Christmas, to the woman I was at twenty-five. I want to share parts of it with you because I think most of us never go back and tell that woman she did okay.

Dear twenty-five-year-old Lucy,

You are sitting in that apartment in Iowa City with the carpet that smells like the last tenant's cat. You are eating ramen at a card table because you have not bought a real one yet. You are working two jobs and going to school at night and you are terrified you are behind.

You are not behind. You are not behind. You are not behind.

You are going to meet Mark in eight months at the wedding of a coworker you barely know. He will be there because he is the brother of the bride. You will think he is too quiet. You will be wrong. He is not too quiet. He is just deciding whether you are worth talking to. You will be.

You are going to marry him on a Saturday in October on a farm outside of town with sixty-two people and a borrowed dress and a chocolate cake that will taste better than any cake you have eaten since. Your mother will cry. Your father will give a toast that is too long. You will dance with Mark to a song you both pretend to hate.

You are going to have Emma in the summer of 2019 and you are going to feel, for the first three months, like you are not going to make it. You will make it. The crying is normal. The fog is normal. The strange grief of your old body and your old freedom is normal. None of it lasts. All of it is in service of something you can't see yet.

You are going to have Noah three years later and it will be different and somehow easier and somehow harder and you will, by the time he is two, know what kind of mother you actually are. She is patient and a little bit funny and not as crafty as she pictured. She is enough.

You are going to start a tiny candle business at thirty-four in your laundry room and you are going to make one hundred and eighty-three dollars in profit the first month and you are going to cry at the post office about it. You will not be embarrassed about the crying. You will be proud of the dollars.

You are going to learn that you do not have to earn your right to be in your own life. You are going to learn this slowly, and unevenly, and you will forget it some weeks and remember it others. You will write a blog. The blog will be read by women you will never meet, and you will love them anyway. Hello, you future women. I love you.

You are going to be okay, Lucy. You are going to be more than okay. You are going to have a husband who puts his hand on the back of your neck for one long plain second when you are sad, and you are going to know it is the love you wanted.

Almost six. Kids at the table. Mark home. Tea hot. Love yourself backwards tonight. Write the letter. Talk tomorrow. — Lucy