Dear Lacey,

Unfortunately, the world isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, it can kinda suck. Life is difficult and stressful, sometimes you’re going to feel like you’re drowning and sometimes you’re going to crash and burn, I want you to know that this is okay.

You’re going to make a lot of mistakes and some dumb decisions and that’s okay too. It’s taken me five years to realise that you are not going to learn from the mistakes I make, the same way I didn’t learn from mum’s and our brother didn’t learn from dad’s. The best way to learn is to endure experience. Experience pain, happiness, love, heartbreak, sadness, fear. You will learn from every experience, maybe not life lessons but you will learn and knowledge is power, knowing one small piece of information could save your life, or someone else’s.

We all mess up and I want you to know that it’s okay, don’t go beating yourself up about it, change it if you can but if you can’t, move on, move forward. Always move forward. Sometimes you’re gonna mess up so bad that you will genuinely question the possibility of time travel so you can go back but you can’t, forward is the only way you’re going, so keep your head up, accept the consequences if you are without power to change anything. Accept and keep moving. You can only try so hard and if your best isn’t good enough then don’t waste any time worrying about it.

I’d like to make you aware that no one can fully predict what is going to happen in your life. I wanted to be an artist when I was younger, then I wanted to be a magazine editor, now I want to be a writer. Who knows, in a years time, I might have joined the army (lmao this is funny, reading it back because the army involves running and the only thing I run is my mouth.) We can’t even predict ourselves in the long run because every day you are growing. Life is hard, unfair and a total mystery. People are going to hurt you, make you want to give up, you’re going to cry yourself to sleep some nights. This doesn’t make you weak. Life won’t be easy and falling down seven times isn’t fun but if you stand up eight, it’ll always be worth it. Don’t live in fear of messing up because you won’t learn if you don’t. Have fun, live. Experience as much as possible, stay up late, wear nice clothes, watch a whole series of your favourite TV show in a day, make a bucket list and complete it. Don’t take everything to heart, opinions aren’t facts, exams aren’t easy, break ups can be difficult, last goodbyes are hard to say but you’re lucky if you get the chance and money doesn’t grow on trees but bad things happen baby. The world keeps spinning and so should you, if you’ve fallen, pick yourself up, dust yourself off and keep going. Don’t let anything hold you down, you’re worth so much more than that.

Carry yourself, you deserve everything this planet has to offer.

Good luck moosh.

It’s always interesting to reread my old posts, to remember what I was going through and what I constantly had to tell myself to keep going and being so eager to be able to learn a lesson in the process so I could pass it onto you in the hopes it would make your life easier. I really do hope that at some point, this kind of thing does help you out.