With this first week of summer, my main goal has been to sleep in later. When you get up at 5:30 every day for 9 months, it takes time to sleep to 7:30 again, so when I was still in bed at 9:15 this morning, I was so proud of myself, even if my stepmonster called me a slug for it! :-)
That turned into reading blogs online until 10:30, then a Skype date with a friend, an Amazon delivery, and then, spending the entire day reading a book I bought as a birthday gift, here it is:
This book is a book of letters, letters to Dear Sugar that are responded to bluntly, matter-of-factly, with some explicit language, but always with empathy. That's exactly what this book is about - a book of empathy on many different complications in this long, lovely life we all lead.
I wanted to share the last letter with you, it's lovely. Also, share some commentary. So here it is.
Tiny Beautiful Things
Dear Sugar,
I read your column religiously. I'm twenty-two. From what I can tell by your writing, you're in your early forties. My question is short and sweet: What would you tell your twentysomething self if you could talk to her now?
Love, Seeking Wisdom
Dear Seeking Wisdom,
Stop worrying about whether you're fat. You're not fat. Or rather, you're sometimes a little bit fat, but who gives a shit? (A-fucking-men.) There is nothing more boring and fruitless than a woman lamenting on the fact that her stomach is round. Feed yourself. Literally. The sort of people worthy of your love will love you more for this, sweet pea.
In the middle of the night in the middle of your twenties when your best woman friend crawls naked into your bed, straddles you, and says, "You should run away from me before I devour you," believe her.
You are not a terrible person for wanting to break up with someone you love. You don't need a reason to leave. (But when one of your reasons involves the content of the first paragraph of this letter, best be on your way.) Wanting to leave is enough. Leaving doesn't mean you're incapable of real love or that you'll never love anyone else again. It doesn't mean you're morally bankrupt or psychologically demented or a nymphomaniac. It means you wish to change the terms of one particular relationship. That's all. Be brave enough to break your own heart. (Wish I would have read that last line last September, but still feels good to gloss my eyes over that one today.)
When the really sweet but fucked-up gay couple invites you over to their cool apartment to do Ecstasy with them, say no.
There are some things you can't understand yet. Your life will be a great and continuous unfolding. It's good you've worked hard to resolve childhood issues while in your twenties, but understand that what you resolve will need to be resolved again. And again. You will come to know things that can only be known with the wisdom and age and grace of years. Most of those things will have to do with forgiveness. (So true that as our lives unfold, as we see more, learn more, spend more time with new people, with the same people, our experiences are recolored through a new set of lenses. The work of understanding is never done.)
One evening you will be rolling around on the wooden floor of your apartment with a man who will tell you he doesn't have a condom. You will smile in this spunky way that you think is hot and tell him to fuck you anyway. This will be a mistake for which you alone will pay.
Don't lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don't have a career. You have a life. (Work to live, my friends.) Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don't know what it is yet. (Ahhhh, love these joyous words. However I build an amazing future, be it via writing, sharing Arbonne, consulting regarding teaching, or some new way I haven't figured out yet, all I know is that the stuff on my vision board most certainly will become a reality.)
You cannot convince people to love you. This is an absolute rule. No one will every give you love because you want him or her to give it. (Got a good understanding of this in the months since last August. Amazing what a little distance and new people can do for you.) Real love moves freely in both directions. Don't waste your time on anything else.
Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you'll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you'll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.
One hot afternoon during the era in which you've gotten yourself ridiculously tangled up with heroin, you will be riding the bus and thinking what a worthless piece of crap you are when a little girl will get on the bus holding the strings of two purpose balloons. She'll offer you one of the balloons, but you won't take it because you believe you no longer have a right to such tiny beautiful things. You're wrong. You do. (Please substitute any shit in your life for the heroin. We always deserve the tiny, beautiful things.)
Your assumptions about the lives of others are in direction relation to your naive pomposity. Many people you believe to be rich are not rich. Many people you think have it easy worked hard for what they got. Many people who seem to be gliding right along have suffered and are suffering. Many people who appear to you to be old and stupidly saddled down with kids and cars and houses were once every bit as hip and pompous as you.
When you meet a man in the doorway of a Mexican restaurant who later kissed you while explaining that this kiss doesn't "mean anything" because, as much as he likes you, he is not interested in having a relationship with you or anyone right now, just laugh and kiss him back. Your daughter will have his sense of humor. Your son will have his eyes.
The useless days will all up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people's diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave your arms or not. These things are your becoming.
One Christmas at the very beginning of your twenties when your mother gives you a warm coat that she saved for months to buy, don't look at her skeptically after she tells you should though the coat was perfect for you. Don't hold it up and say it's longer than you like your coats to be and too puffy and possibly too warm. Your mother will be dead by spring. That coat will be the last give she gave you. You will regret the small thing you didn't say for the rest of your life. (How fragile life is, remember that. It could change in an instant, so tell the people you love that you love them. Be patient when your family annoys you. Go visit your Grandfather, hell, take him to a Cubs spring training game. Do the things of importance every day to show those you care about just how much you love them.)
Say thank you. (Be thankful, people. Think in small moments of gratitude, for your family, for your old friends, for all that is new, for the books you had delivered from Amazon, and the gift your bff won't mind you reading before you give it to her. Appreciate this beautiful life.)
Yours, Sugar
Has anyone else read this book? Thoughts?
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