Dear Mister McCarter (a letter to my older self)

Mister McCarter,

I have nothing but respect for you. I think about you often and often I am at a loss for words. I have no clue where you are, what you are doing or who you are with. I can only hope and guess a few things:

I hope you haven’t lost your smile. I pray your laugh lines runs deep and your wrinkles continue to cease to exist. I pray you find genuine love. The love you grew up reading about, witnessed and receive on occasion. I pray you someday don’t have to wake up everyday and just give it to yourself but there is someone who is there excited to give it to you as well. 

Of all the things, you are capable and able of doings and achieving in this world. More than a hope and a guess is a slight prayer that you actually won’t end up alone. Real tears, that would be the saddest thing for the romantic to end up alone. After a lifetime of searching there has to be someone. There seems to be a lot of pressure and honestly you do go through phases of wanting to be alone but you know what those times are: a facade. 

You may just need to focus and buckle down on your assignments, your health, and your means to build a lil wealth for yourself. Through balance, trial and errors and years of introspection you realize you can do all of those things with the right person along with you. 

You will not have to sacrifice your freedom, time, dignity or art for love. You know that it is finding the person who goes, “I see you for you” and that’s it. I will show up for me and for them but love is a two way street and I am asking myself, “Who is showing up for me?” 

In the way that I want to be seen by them. You can be picky, a lil shallow and honestly don’t ever change that. The search for love doesn’t mean your standards get lower but you learn to look for the correct flags. 

Thankfully after years of dating, you learn to spot the red flags and avoid them. Yet, you learn something even greater. There are green flags, green like go. Like growth, like we can take our time and get to know each other. 

Green flags, what a helluva thought for you but you realize what providing grace to people allows you to see. Trauma informed love. I will love you and be more patient with you because I can understand and take into account what you have been through. Just show me that you want to be here, for me, for the love. 

So pragmatically, that is allowing someone the space and time to walk into love instead of only falling into it. You can fall but can you get back up after it? and what happens when you do?. Do you walk together, away from each other or what? Trust me, falling for each other, that is the healthy part. Let each other know they are the one but after the fall, you both will get back up and shake off the dust and then what? 

This is where you truly learn to walk. Step by step, stride by stride, you learn each other’s flags. You talk about the red flags while looking for the green ones. You celebrate the green ones and acknowledge, “this is what I want” You learn what truly feels good, the stuff that makes your heart warm and skip a beat, just like in the books. You will learn that it will happen and you will learn that it comes and goes in waves, so you learn to manage the heartbreaks and aches and realize those moments are when you should focus on yourself, art and community. 

The green flag will wave itself all over again and you will know were to go from there. Follow the bliss they said, but you have learned to follow the love. For you, love lets the poet, poet. The art, art. And the smile, smile.