Note To Self:
DO NOT OPEN UNTIL 2011

Jennifer,

When you read this in the year 2011, you will have been through a great many changes since the time of its writing in 2001. You may have married and had children. Hopefully you’ve graduated from college by now. You may have lost a parent, or both. Your brothers will be 25 and 20 and perhaps in college or marriages of their own. You may be an aunt. There will be a new president. You may be living in a different state. You may be in a different country. New friends will have appeared and old friends may have vanished. Yes, many things may be different.

Something will be the same, however. You will have the same parents and siblings. You will have the same teeth. You will have the same brain. You will have the same heart. You will have a majority of the same memories. I hope that you will have the same desire to learn and write and paint and love and care and listen.

(To get an idea of how much can change, think about where you were in 1991. You were 14 years old and living in a situation with an abusive stepfather and an apathetic mother. You were beaten, scarred, scared and lonely. Ten years has truly make a world of difference. You still want to make the best of your life and still want to better yourself and your position in life, and you still feel a bit lonely at times.  But my God, girl … you have came a long, long way from that hellish period.  You have put an end to abusive relationships and started believing in yourself.  In ten years you can accomplish a lot.)

Whatever does happen – please do this for the Jennifer of 2001. Please remember that you were laughing at this point in time. Remember what it felt like to lay in the backyard and look up at the sky so full of stars. Remember that you felt so vulnerable and yet resilient. Remember that you were glad to finally be in college. Remember that you traded poems with a guy online who sang a song about his soap contents just to make you smile. Remember that you talked to your mom on a regular basis and that she told you she loved you. Remember the feeling of the breeze blowing your hair in a million directions as you breathed in the salty air on the coast in early March and picked up shells on Long Beach. Remember the taste of your first piece of key lime pie and how the tart and sweet of it all gave you goose bumps. Remember what it was like to read about the history of art for the first time and how you felt so overwhelmed at the enormity of knowledge you could attain. Remember the dancing in your living room to imaginary music with a man loved you for who you were. Also remember that things weren’t perfect in 2001 but that you made the best of it that you could. Don’t beat yourself up for your mistakes during that time, but don’t idealize it either. There were afternoons when you looked over pictures of your ex-husband and cried for the break of union between the two of you. There were nights where you slept on the couch after a fight and shivered at the lack of warmth. There were moments in this year that you wondered if you’d make it another day, never mind another decade.

Remember the good. Reflect on the less than fantastic. Measure yourself now. If you are stronger than you were ten years ago move on and hold your head high. If you have grown weaker, find strength and make amends in your current life. It’s not too late.

Love yourself. Love those around you. Love life.

Love, the Jennifer of 2001