Letter to You, Who Are Desperate & Sick

This is a letter to my younger self, but perhaps you will find some use in it.

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This is a letter to my younger self, but perhaps you will find some use in it.

Dear E,

First of all: I am so sorry that your life has taken this turn. And I am sorry that you don’t know whether or not things will improve.

The thing I have found—and which you will learn for the first time soon, and then again and again—is that despair is worse than discomfort, and when things are at their worst, in despair you will dread that this is simply what your life is now. This new bad, you think, might be the new normal, and you can’t fathom living a life where this is your new normal—let alone the idea that things could become even worse, and that must certainly be even more intolerable.

If you can at all run from despair, do it.

I will not ply you with platitudes or aphorisms about how God always has a plan or that the reason for your illness will be revealed. I do have a few thoughts from where I am, years from where you are, that might help you.