{the.wednesday.whistle}

dear Mikki and Katie…

so much of my life has been defined by a pair of thong flip flops and the mistakes i have made. at 21 years young, i walked into the post office in downtown bangor on a rainy afternoon, in my dark gray american eagle flip flops and too big for my head hoop earrings and signed up for a private post office box. this seemingly meaningless, mundane task to the clerk who handed me the keys (box #361) was perhaps the single most exciting, horrifying, and liberating moments in my adult life. i signed my name, amanda young, to the user agreement form. it seemed almost disingenuous to write it…as if i was signing away….a mistake. and as liberating as this one identifying millisecond of time was at my fingertips, it felt as though i was simultaneously penning three years of my life away.

my parents had pleaded with me, begged me, and even tried to bribe me to not get married. their fountain of marital mistakes, and a rather disheveled divorce later on, did not deter me on my walk down the isle. while they never embraced my obsession with wedded bliss in the sunset of my teen years, they did eventually surrender, and supported, if nothing else, my stubborn persistence to tie the knot with my high school boyfriend. i can say, with all honesty and the comfort of almost a decade of personal growth and arduous personal reflection since,  i knew that day in july 2000  that i was making a huge, life altering mistake. a little over a year later, i was in the middle of my own divorce…something i vowed i would never, ever, let happen to me.

and people will tell you that there are no mistakes in this journey of life. but there are. there are mistakes where you hurt people…not really on purpose, but because of single mindedness on your part that wasn’t really an accident because you knew, consciously, that you were doing it. there are definitely mistakes… minuscule ones, little ones, big ones, huge ones, gigantic ones….unforgettable ones. and while these typographical errors in your life story cannot be rewritten with white out and a fresh Sharpie Pen, they most often help you transcribe the next chapter, a better chapter, when the page turns.

and that day in the post office, in my $7.99 flip flops and torn in the right, back pocket jeans, was the first day i ever truly walked on my own. and it felt really….bitter sweet with a side of tornado.

all my love darlings,

p.s. no matter what mistakes…however big or however small…that you make in your life, you can always come home….

p.p.s…daily mantra: “and i don’t want the world to see me, ’cause i don’t think that they’d understand, when everything’s made to be broken, i just want you to know who i am.” {the.goo.goo.dolls}