To: 16-year-old J.R. Roland
From: 25-year-old J.R. Roland

Mom is wondering if you’ll have to depend on disability after high school graduation. If the pain keeps you from attending half a school day and getting a good night’s sleep, I suppose that’s the only conclusion to come to. I know you’re thinking the same thing. That’s why you stay home in your room, writing bright stories of high schoolers who excel in their studies and participate in dance clubs. You live through the characters of your own creation to repaint your own story.

When I look back at where you are now, I title this period you’re in as “the metamorphosis”. Things will change; your doctor is going to prescribe you a medication that’s going to make you feel like a new person. Don’t mind the side effects; the bizarre dreams you’re about to experience every night will be put to creative use later. You’ll go on to attend college, participate in dance performances, and even move across the country in hopes of making it big.

By now, you’re probably assuming I’m writing this letter to cheer you up or reassure you that everything will be alright.

I’m not.

Once chronic pain relief sets in, life’s possibilities overwhelm you. You must make new decisions, and unfortunately, you don’t always give yourself the time to think them through. This results in past problems being replaced with new ones. You stumble through life, get your heart broken many times, break your own heart, and find new ways to get hurt. You’ll find the sarcastic phrase “I’d rather have another back surgery than deal with this” to be suitable during these trials and errors.

I suppose you’ll ask me to tell you which parts you’re going to mess up on, so I can save you the heartache. Don’t ask me to curse you with the limitation of knowing your path. It will be just like the back brace you grew up in; it does a whole lot of nothing for you.

I didn’t write you this letter to make your life easier. I don’t want it to be easier. You were born out of unpredictable circumstances; a warped spine and an unreliable heart that does three-quarters of the job it should. I will not straighten what’s been bent or tune what’s beating out of order. I will not morph your timeline into a fairytale, for the unsavory situation of your birth is the very place you learned to bloom.

The ‘metamorphosis’ you’re currently experiencing plants the seed; your love for writing and storytelling. After this, you’ll move forward in life as if walking a thin tightrope as unpredictable as the curves caused by your contorted vertebrae. The winds of life knock you to either side, and you learn to balance somewhere between acceptance and disturbance, finding refuge in a consistent state of rumination and restlessness.

It is here, in these sensations, that you build your imagination a home where your creativity can bloom. It sprouts forward, just as a dandelion sprouts from the cracks in a sidewalk. Perhaps the dandelion sprouted unevenly, leaning too much to one side than another, slightly worn from foot traffic. Yet, I will not pluck that dandelion from the unsavory circumstances it grew, for it would wither and die.

Just like that, you were constructed to observe life from the perception of the crooked. You’ll find that after years of practice, the characters you create for your stories form a depth only you, yourself, know all too well. Like your spine, they morph slightly crooked to reality, all living in strange worlds that were heavily inspired by the bizarre dreams caused by that medication you’re about to start.

So no, I will not tell you your fate. Don’t expect me to warn you when your next surgery comes. You will not get cautioned which friends become enemies. I won’t tell you what choices you make that will hurt you and those around you. I’ve only written this letter to tell you that in order to reach your life’s purpose, you must experience life at its fullest and feel everything deeply. It is during the greatest moments of turmoil that you find that your life’s greatest passion is to write. Writing is your reason for being and the central element of your spiritual awakening, for you will soon realize the only afterlife you can substantially prove is the words left behind when you are gone.

So, don’t look at me to tell you what to do. Instead, look under the scar tissue zipping up your body, and you’ll find that you were born with the roadmap of your life etched in bone and marrow. An ever-twisted, bizarre existence created to birth forward a storyteller; a great curse and a magnificent gift.

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