Letter to a 10 year old me.

Hi Anthony,

This is a note from you in 2017. You are 45 now. Yes, you have actually made it that far. 

That funny feeling you had for Beamer? Turns out you are gay. Sorry about that. You are going to hate it most of the time. You are going to be 42 before you seriously do anything about it. It is going to be f***ING painful for the most part. So far, no requited love; you are going to fall in love a few times but your defence mechanisms  (we will get to those a bit later) are going to serve to keep you afloat. 

You know that disability? Yup, still here. Still preventing you from riding a bicycle but, on the whole, you are dealing with it really well. You can drive (such independence!). 

Otherwise, being a grown up is rubbish. You were so keen to be an adult weren’t you. Stop it. You are going to be an insecure, pretentious and sarcastic creature. Bullying and being a terrible bully at school and an asexual square at university will ensure that you are left with many challenges to overcome. You will struggle. Therapy will be a regular feature of your adult life (one of the reasons for this letter).By the way,  you should probably be careful about your academic expectations.  

On a more positive note; you will finally diet at 41. You will still be fat but less so. However, you are still not reconciled to your body shape. There is still to much of you in all of the wrong places.

You are going to travel pretty extensively,  good for you. You are going to develop a solid set of close friends many of whom will probably read this and think  ‘WTF is he doing!’. But they will stick with you. Appreciate this, always. You will also develop an impressive taste in music (at least in your own opinion).

In a couple of years you will decide to become a civil servant.  Don’t expect too much from that decision.  It will come to pass but will not be the sinecure you expect. 

In conclusion,  sorry mate. Life is going to be challenging.  You will seriously contemplate ending it a couple of times. The jury is still out on that one. There are going to be some lovely moments and some great experiences but they will be beacons in an otherwise rather grim existence.  

I will endeavour to write again in the event of a dramatic change in circumstances. 

Huge hug young man and sorry I couldn’t be more upbeat.

A xx