Dear seventeen-year-old Andrew,

You're about to make a lot of really dumb choices.
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It's okay. Really. I understand why. Or at least, I understand now. A little something you never learned was how to be in the water without drowning yourself; how to play chicken with the train without convincing yourself you could stare it down.
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But all of those voids inside you won't be filled with drugs or alcohol or women or fantastic stories of death defiance. There's no prize for the person least fulfilled by life, despite even your best attempts. And nobody you love will ever be able to beat those demons out of you, so you better learn to raise your own fists.
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If only you understood how different things become when you grow older. How fuzzier the lens and less scary the monsters beneath the microscope. I wish I could give you a hug. I wish I could tell you that it's going to be okay. That you just have to hold it together for a little while longer, and that great things would be coming your way.
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At about this time of the night nineteen years ago, you were sitting on a car hood getting stoned with your friend, Rob, out at Washburn heights. I remember he turned to you and asked you if you were okay, and you said that you wanted to die. I'll never forget how livid he was; how angry and pissed off. "How dare you?" he asked me. How dare I. How dare I when she fought so hard?
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And so for better or worse, here I am. And there you are, in this picture, staring at your mother on her deathbed. And we're two different people. And that's okay, too. I've learned to forgive you your mistakes because you didn't know. You tried, but you were a kid. Frightened and as alone as you'd ever been, and your world had turned upside down. Your life had become a nightmare.
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Tonight I'm thinking less of mom's death and more about you. I find myself wishing you a good evening nineteen years ago, a stolid moment of silence, and a peace that has--so far--remained elusive all this time later.
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Things only get harder from here. That's just the nature of life. That's just the way you've chosen to live. You've defied and refused to be consoled in favor of holding the truth in one hand and a pen in the other. It doesn't matter where it takes you, it doesn't matter the beauty you write or don't write; it doesn't matter the fires you burn or the ones you extinguish--so long as you know why you chose to go that way.
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Love,
Future Andrew