Letter to the Universe
Dear Universe
I’m battling at the moment. I haven’t felt this unsettled in the longest time. Life is offering up huge lessons and struggles and discomfort and opportunities. But it’s an offering wrapped up in anxiety and perturbed inner monologues that loop endlessly, it’s tightly coiled around regret and questioning; and it’s a package deal.
It feels as though my inner child is trying to break free. He wants me to do better. He wants me to scrub at the layers of varnish he began to coat himself in all those years ago. He did it to protect himself. He thought that’s what his parents wanted him to do. He wanted to be a good boy, a nice person. He thought that society would accept him more willingly if he just covered his inner, creative, eccentric freak. He was too scared to stand out.
And now, he stands in front of me. His blond locks lilt in the wind, his knobby knees shiver slightly in the cold morning air of a Sunday fun run. But he will not let me be distracted by small nuisances and nuances. His gaze is direct and piercing, his eye contact unrelenting.
He knows that my marriage has failed. He knows that I met someone lovely recently and built that chance meeting on untruths and shaky ground and mirages. He knows why I did it. I was scared, scared of being alone, scared of losing something that my mind had reimagined as magical and mythical but also unattainable.
He remembers hiding from people and being terrified of their scrutinising eyes and cynical smiles, and the ever present gnawing fear of ridicule. He knows that I did it out of fear. He would have done the same. We’re both still trapped in the amber of 80s romance, the American dream, and low self esteem, the cosmic horror of being alone in the world and the universe.
He looks like my daughter at the same age. But she has a chance. Her inner light is not dimmed at all. She’s a miracle, a gift, something to protect at all costs, even at the expense of my own, imagined happiness. And I’ve done my best to show her how loved she is and how special she is and that no one is ever allowed to dim that light.
But that boy and I both recognise that we’ve reached an impasse. There is a ledge before us that offers no safety net of salvation below or cowardly alternate way down. I’m being hard on us, but this is the one time when overly critical tough-love is necessary. This is a crack of a chance in an indifferent world to make a difference to myself, and by default, a difference to others (that is my ultimate hope).
So here we go, into the unknown. We’re still scared but we hold this fear like a protesting child, it’s all bluster but a child nonetheless. We arm ourselves with honesty and vulnerability, prepared for the first time for our inner light to burst forth and illuminate the unchartered course ahead of us. It’s a tunnel encased in darkness, but there’s an excitement and newness to it that entices us forwards.
We forgive ourselves for past mistakes. We acknowledge them as well as our flaws, and release them like small paper boats onto gentle, infinite waters. Even the act of writing this now offers solace and peace.
Thank you, Universe. Your teachings are brutal but beautiful, indifferent but caring.
And to you reading this, wherever you are emotionally or metaphysically, I offer you love and hope that you too can embark on this journey with me. We’ll be the better for it and our younger selves will thank us from the waning past and the waxing future.
I wish you all the luck, love and hope in the world. You’re a lovely vessel of pulsating life and love that needs to be experienced by the world. Let’s step off the ledge together.
Much love, Grant xxx
