It’s lonely here
Without them, my stories transition to memories
Without them, the laughter falls on deaf ears
The silliness isn’t so silly anymore
And my smile feels forced
It’s lonely without them
The one who needs no introduction because their personality is so loud
The one whose laughter was formed through sadness, but it brings joy to those who are privileged to hear it
The one who is so authentically kind that you can feel their positivity when they enter the room
It’s lonely starting over, but I can
It’s hard finding more like them, but I’ll try
It’s sad and it hurts, but I’ll smile more, and I’ll laugh harder
It’s not easy, but I won’t stop trying to feel whole again
It’s lonely, but one day, it won’t be

Was there a time that I persevered when I wanted to quit?
Was there ever a time I did not?
At the age of 5, when most kids learn to read I could not.
Hour by hour, my mom showed me flash cards of phonics and sounded them out.
My grandpa and grandma read books with me.
I could not get it. Words did not make sense.
I could not see them in the order they were supposed to be in.
I would see a page of words and it would shift to say something other than what I was being told it said.
My eyes deceived me.
Hours passed. Weeks flew. Months turned to years.
I could not read.
One day, the words made a tiny bit of sense. The sounds were memorable. I was nine.

Hour by hour. I read what was expected for school. I traced letters and sounded it out in my head.
Workbook after workbook, page by page.

I could read.

Five years later I walked into the local library and brought home the Hobbit.

Three weeks later I returned it with a head full of stories.

I am now a writer.

Perseverance pays off.

Dear Youth Me,

When people are asked to describe you, your no-quit attitude is the lead of your story. You almost quit writing this. Why?

You did not know what to write about and you have felt for the longest time that anything you do academically has to make up for the things you can’t do physically.

You have not quit countless of other times — and as much as you do NOT want to say this… this most DEFINITELY WILL NOT be the LAST.

So, before I move any further, CONGRATULATIONS to YOU for taking the time to look back and see what you have accomplished; writing this piece is TRULY a PRIME example of YOU NOT quitting!

Another example can be seen where you are right now, what ground are your feet hitting?

The ground of YOUR home; the place where YOU are staying by YOURSELF!

I do NOT really comprehend when someone says you have a NO-QUIT attitude because EVERY goal you set for yourself has one ending, SUCCESS (or at least a lot of them).

After graduating with your masters degree in Sports Journalism, it took you nine months to find a job and as much as you wanted one, you are lucky enough that you did NOT NEED one.

But you made a DEAL with your parents that a job equaled moving out.

As much as your PARENTS MOTIVATED YOU and still do, you found that job YOURSELF… congrats!

Keep on being you!

Your Youth Self.

Love,

Jake

To a girl,
Young, scared, hurt, and overcome by the feeling of wanting to crawl out of her skin. You have come so far. You have marched down the length of that dock, felt the dead, dry, prickly summer grass on the bottoms of your feet, and you’ve kept walking. You threw away that swimsuit, you know the one. The pale blue bikini with the tiny yellow and pink flowers. You’ve even gone back to that lake. It took you a couple tries, but you gathered the courage to place your picnic blanket under the big oak tree, remove your shoes, and swim in the beautiful deep blue Washington water once again.
I don’t blame you for staying away for as long as you did. Even just driving on the bridge that overlooks the water made you shiver. There were a lot of firsts that happened that day at the lake, and the weeks to follow. It was your first time going to the lake without an adult. It was your first time visiting the public swimming area of the lake. It was your first time jumping off the long wooden dock. It was your first time being touched by a man. It was your first time feeling the gaze of a man threaten you into silence. It was the first time you were so terrified that you couldn’t make even the tiniest weakest sound. It was the first time you felt like an uninvited guest in your own body.
Some disturbed people will tell you it was your fault. “A fourteen-year-old girl shouldn’t be wearing such a skimpy bathing suit,” they’ll say. That is an idea that has been passed down through the generations, and unfortunately, that idea is still widely communicated to young girls today. But you know now that the way you dress is never an invitation to somebody else. I wish someone would’ve told me that in the weeks that followed.
I am incredibly proud of the way you handled yourself in those following weeks. Looking back, it was upsetting that there wasn’t more the police could do. You gave them the location, the date and time, and they even had you go to the police station and meet with an artist who drew a portrait of your assaulter while you picked his eyes, ears, mouth, and nose out from a book of a thousand little drawings. It was like playing paper dolls. You still question if you got it right. You didn’t have a clear image of his whole face. Just his eyes. Those penetrative eyes that silently shouted at you to sit still, stay quiet, and tell no one what had just happened under the water. His eyes were the easiest feature to pick out of the book. To this day, I believe you could still pick them out of a crowd. Some images just never leave, even if the pain has started to fade.
Pushing through that darkness and letting that fear die out was one of the hardest things you’ve done. Even if your predator wasn’t brought to justice, you created a personal justice. Your body belongs to yourself again. You feel at home in your skin, and you dress however the hell you want. You wear scarves in your hair, bikini tops and little jean shorts, turtlenecks and long skirts, cropped shirts. You wear it all, and you don’t wear any of it to send a specific message. You just like how you look. And let me just say that that is a huge accomplishment in a society that raises women to hate how they look once they reach a certain age. Keep fighting that predetermined narrative.
Taking back your body was the first step. June 14th, 2023, you went back to that public swimming area. You wore your favorite swimsuit. You took your dog and your partner at the time for extra comfort and support. Getting back in the water was hard. That dock might always hold a painful memory, but you will never let it keep you from enjoying something that everyone has the right and privilege to do. Young girls shouldn’t have to fear something as innocent as a lake day or removing their swim coverups in a public swimming area. You have now marched back down the length of that dock, jumped into that water, and enjoyed the freedom of your body swimming in the magnificent deep blue Washington waters. Those eyes aren’t watching you anymore and those hands have let you go.

If you had asked me as a kid
What do you want to do or be?
Back then I knew that my answer
Was that, I just want to be me

I was so crafty with my hands
And I just had a way with words
But in a world that wants success
I felt my art was for the birds

Though, I wondered who would listen
For creatives have to lobby
To convince themselves and others
That it’s more than just a hobby

So out of fear, I shifted gears
To a career that was accepted
Because the work I truly loved
Was so heavily rejected

When you say that you’re an artist
People draw their own conclusion
That you need to find a “real” job
And live not in disillusion

But my heart could not continue
To live a life that was adrift
I knew that I had a purpose
And there was money in my gift

Against the odds, I wrote and drew
Some poems and pictures far and wide
And I knew no one could stop me
Nor the power I have inside

Today I have proudly written
Over three hundred lovely poems
And my art can be found thriving
On the walls of serval homes

Don’t let the world tell you your worth
To have you living in a box
You hold the key to your success
Go break the chains and change the locks

If you asked me that same question
I would not sway or hesitate
I know who I’m destined to be
You see, I was born to create

The idea of giving up seemed so easy to me
To throw in the towel
And simply just be..I don’t know just didn’t want this anymore
Whatever was left that person would have been a shell of me

Not only would I have lost myself
But the idea of who I was
The creative side of me
My dreams
Then I would have allowed my mental state to eat me alive

During that, I was ready for that darkness
There were times when I wanted to feel empty
Be nothing

Made decisions that I knew were necessary

Therapy how I needed you but was too nervous to dive in
Faced my fear it helped make things clear in my life
Talking to someone who knows what they are doing is a wonderful relief

Medicated the one thing I never thought I would have done
I’m so happy I did
For the first time in a long time, my depression is not toying with me
The anxiety that riddles me is at bay.
After a whole year on this, I came to terms with who I was
And who I will never be again

Being a work in progress is who I am

Always trying is who I am
Never dampening on my dreams
Always let the creativity shine

Be that beacon of hope, love, mindfulness, and happiness.
Is what I need to do

The idea of giving up became a distant dream to me.

Dear Unsealers,

Someone once said in an interview that in order to have good mental health you should do something that makes you feel alive. Not just one day, but every day for every month. I found that answer kinda beautiful: not only because I could relate to it, but also because it’s one thing to exist in this life and it’s another to live it. You may be wondering what this has to do with nearly giving up on something you love, but I feel like the answer is fairly obvious: how can you ever be successful if you can’t even love yourself?

That’s a question that’s haunted me for years. I’ve always wanted to be a famous author, to work on movies and TV shows, and maybe even make a video game. I always thought I had what it took to accomplish these things, but my mental health began to set me back further and further. On the night of November 13th, 2023, my life was permanently changed. I didn’t know it then, but my anxiety was going to start crippling me: the right side of my body going numb as I struggled to move it, or taking my voice and locking it behind a failing mouth. It’s amazing how our mental health can transform our bodies into something unrecognizable – a scary new that you wouldn’t think possible, and yet somehow remain the same empty shell. I’ve been trying to nurture that empty shell into a human again, but it’s super hard once you let your body and brain give up on you. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth it to fight everyday in hopes of being better.

Life isn’t easy. It’s actually the hardest thing we’ll ever do. I want to say that you’re going to be alright and that your goals, ambition, and hard work will pay off, but in reality you’ll never be successful until you can love every inch of yourself. Don’t be afraid to look in the mirror and point out the things you love about yourself. Don’t be afraid to go out into the world while being too big or even too small. Learn to love yourself now and celebrate your wins, your losses, your achievements, your failures, and your flaws. If you can love yourself through anything, then you’ll be successful in everything. Every day, do something that makes you feel alive. Do it every day of every month.

I still plan to accomplish my goals of writing, filmmaking, and video game development. I still dream of the day that my name is out there and people are reading my books, watching movies I’ve been a part of, and playing games I’ve written storylines for. I hope that those of you who are reading this can one day join me in celebrating the life we’ve all worked hard to accomplish, and then maybe we can look each other in the eyes and know that we fought for our right to love ourselves no matter what others think or the setbacks we’ve faced. This is to self love. A powerful feeling that can take you past the stars, past the moon, and to somewhere far greater.