Dear Self,
By now, you should be in your junior year of medical school.
I imagine you buried in trances and textbooks, memorizing diseases and drug classifications. I imagine sleepless nights, coffee growing cold beside you. (Would you trade Coke for coffee? Newsflash: I haven’t had a single sip of Coke in six months!) Maybe you found your people. Maybe you learned to enjoy your own silence. Maybe you’re fulfilled. Maybe you’re questioning everything.
I’ve imagined so many versions of you.
But the only version that exists… is me.
I didn’t pursue med school.
Instead, I wear a lab coat. I handle specimens. I stand beneath fluorescent hospital lights, process specimens, and release results that matter to someone’s life. I trade anatomy atlases for laboratory reports and sterile gloves. I peer beyond each specimen under the careful lens of a microscope. I’ve come to consider that small space in the laboratory my haven.
And yet, I still live inside my head.
Stories still visit me in the quiet. I still think in letters. I still type late into the night when everyone else is asleep.
Sometimes I wonder if I disappointed you — if I loosened my grip on a dream we once held so tightly that it shaped our identity. I wonder if this life feels smaller than what you envisioned.
But if you are asking whether I am happy — I am.
Not in the limelight. Not in applause.
But in steadiness. In breath. In a quiet kind of peace.
And if one day I choose to give that dream another chance, I hope you’ll be proud of me for trying. And if I don’t, please trust that I am choosing the life my heart craves right now.
We are allowed to outgrow dreams that once defined us.
Outgrowing is not failing. It is evolving.
And there is something else you need to know:
Being a writer is my dream too.
The sun has begun to shine again. I can breathe easier. The colors feel vivid. I am doing better than I was a year ago.
I didn’t know that starting this website would require bravery.
There are days I still wonder if anyone is reading — if I am helping even one beginner writer feel less alone.
I wake up thinking about what I want to write. Before I sleep, I outline the next piece in my head.
For the first time in a long time, I wake up filled with purpose. This renewed purpose has reframed my outlook.
I built a space for my quirks. For my nuances. For the worlds that once had no room to exist outside of me.
And I am at peace.
For years, I silenced the voice that begged me to write. I ignored the restless ache in my chest that told me this was part of who I am. But no matter how far I tried to drift into practicality, into logic, into safer dreams — it always led me back.
Back to the page.
Back to myself.
And one day, the memories I’ve tucked away — the secret meetings in the cornfield, the confessions by the lake, the confrontation at the pergola, the book thrown in anger, the cutting remarks about my flaws, the passive-aggressive taunts, the night that fed my nightmares — they will find their place in ink.
They were moments of hurt. Of confusion. Of being made small.
And when I finally release them into the world, I believe I will be free.
Free from the chokehold of the past.
Free from the wounds.
Free from the sneers and doubtful stares that once made me question myself.
Because the only voice that ever truly mattered… was mine.
And this time, I am choosing to listen.
All my love,
Joy Clarice