If I knew then what I’m beginning to know now.

Oh Aubrey. You’re scared. Nay, terrified.

You’re sitting on the floor of your DC apartment, exhausted. On the phone — a landline, of course, as it’s 1999 — sobbing.
You worked eight hours today then went to Grad school and they gave you 250 pages to read. Before tomorrow.

It’s already 9pm…you haven’t eaten since lunch, and that was a snack bar purchased at CVS. You have approximately $42 in the bank right now, and you’re hungry and tired and questioning everything and you don’t think you can do it anymore.

You’re putting yourself through Grad School and have to work full time and you’re not a quitter.
You. Do. Not. Quit.
But.
You think you need to.
You can’t afford $65,000/year and while the classes are interesting, you don’t know how they will actually help you in your career. Because, let’s face it: You. Have. No. Idea.

You call your parents. (You’re 22 and that’s what you do.)
You’re a good kid and you don’t want to disappoint them. They put themselves in debt so you could go to the school you loved, the out-of-state-tuition costing them tens of thousands of dollars.

You did well. You excelled.
You pursued biology and genetics because it challenged you, and you took writing and marketing classes that you said were to ensure an easy A and keep up your GPA so you could go to Med School. But what you were really doing was studying what naturally came easy to you. You were doing what you loved. What you will continue to love.

But it’s brought you to here, to this evening on a cold kitchen floor, fucking terrified to admit that you might have chosen wrong. That you had ‘secretly’ applied to Grad School as an alternative to Med School. Because deep down in your soul you knew that working in a lab and doing genetics wasn’t actually your calling.
You hedged your bets and it paid off by getting into Georgetown, in this new and prestigious program.
You were lucky.

You. Are. Terrified.

You tell your parents that you’re taking a leave of absence. They question this. But there really isn’t another choice; you have to.

You start working full time.
You begin to loathe DC, hate the politics of the city.
You work too much.
You fall in lust with a guy with a girlfriend & can’t understand why he doesn’t pick you.
You move to Atlanta.
You live with a crazy, random dude roommate.
You begin to enjoy life.
You begin to enjoy work.
You begin to be less scared, little by little.
You buy a house.
You get a dog.
Your plan — to move to NYC and become a magazine writer — doesn’t happen.
September 11th does.
Your parents split up, after your Dad escaped Building One of World Trade Center and met a woman who is now his wife.
You start working for Google.
People pronounce it “Goggle” and ask if you’re a millionaire when it goes public. People in Atlanta…not much couth.
You move to California.
You get a new job.
Then, a few years later, another one.
You gain confidence and realize that thing you’ve been denying, that “writing thing”, is who you are. It’s who you’ve always been.

You make new friends.
You finally fit somewhere.
You take risks and make a shit ton of mistakes and drink too much and disappoint yourself and fall in love with the wrong man…and then do it all over again. A few times.

You fall out of love with California and move to NYC. And holy fuck, IT IS HARD.
You’re now in your 30's and you’re single and you work too much and you prioritize the wrong stuff. And you have a tendency to avoid the hard stuff, the real stuff.

You never cry.

You put up a wall and show people the you that you think they want to see. You work in marketing; you are your own best project. The brand that is you? It looks good. It is shiny and happy and giving.
You are miserable.

You’re driving in a car with a man you briefly dated and he tells you that he thinks you’re depressed. You realize that you are.
And you want to run away. You like to avoid and run and not feel because if you start to feel, you can’t undo that. You’re afraid to cry because you may never stop.

But.

You remember the terrified 22 year-old on the kitchen floor. And 14 years later, you want to tell her that it will all be ok. Because it will.

So instead of running, avoiding, you sit still. You feel. You cry and yep, it feels like you may never stop. But you do.
You see a therapist. (You’re in NYC; it’s basically mandated here.)
You start to change yourself, little by little. It’s subtle, but it’s powerful.
You start to be honest with yourself; brutally so.
You make different decisions, but sometimes you fall back into old habits. That’s ok…one day at a time.
You’re patient and careful and forgiving with yourself. And it is really, really hard.
Really. Hard.

But Aubrey? You’ve got this. You were ok and you are ok and you will be ok.

So you write this, an open letter to yourself.
And you publish it because it’s due time you act with vulnerability.
And honesty.
And just like that younger Aubrey, on the floor of her kitchen, with tears streaming down her face, you feel a breaking apart of something you’ve been clutching inside.
And it’s a beginning.
It’s today.