What’s it like, having made it this far? Do your legs hurt? Is your hair long? Does it feel like everything you hoped for? Did you ask for what you wanted? Command the answers to your questions? One night at a party you’ll go to the bathroom, look out the small window as it catches the sea in the waning light and remember this letter. You’ll remember youth and being so unsure and free and all those long feelings of waiting. You’ll smile, remember the sensation of your old skin. Touch your heart. Feel its spirit kick. Same breath. Same dreams. You’ll dry your hands quietly and return to the party where your friends sip from tall glasses on the deck in the warm air. On your lips, you’ll have the word ‘forever’. You are in this body forever.

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I wish you knew how worthy you are of the things that are about to happen. Instead, I must bring you this advice in no particular order; beauty, in any state you feel it, is a privilege. Pain is a message. Listen to what it’s asking you to do. Let the wind in. Let it shuffle the papers of your life. Take time out of the surf for a while. Don’t underestimate the lessons that come from watching. Listening. Silence. We don’t always have to have something to show for ourselves. Come bare sometimes. Ask for help. You won’t always have your time in the sun – good – the universe needs its balance. In between the lights go back to quietly working, hoping, yearning. This is how the gods know you truly want it.