Dear Emeka,
It’s your 22nd birthday. It’s been six months since you went down on that football field and two months since you were released from rehab. Today is supposed to be a day of celebration but it feels very different from that. You’re still reeling from the realization that your life is forever changed. The life that you knew and loved is gone and with every day that passes, the hope of getting it back dims.
It doesn’t feel real. Your mind still races with questions that you don’t have the answers to. “How did I get here? What will I do? Where will I go? How could something I love, hurt me so bad?” It’s like you’ve gone through the worst breakup imaginable. You still don’t know what went wrong. While your time in the hospital was scary, there was a level of comfort and expectation that you would be better when you left. You were supposed to walk out of there. Six months have passed and your world is vastly different. While everyone’s lives stopped for a bit, people have had to pick their lives back up. You’re watching everyone live their lives while
You’ve prayed so many prayers hoping that each day would be the day that you wake up and stand. You’ve explored the depths of your soul and you still have no answers. You feel like you’ve been losing.
While today is a dark day, what you don’t know is that it will get darker before it gets brighter. But it does get brighter. In a couple months you will begin volunteering with kids and undergo a painful yet necessary construction on your thoughts, beliefs, yourself, and the world.
You will find new passions and discover that your purpose has never left. You will go on to get your undergrad degree AND your masters. Some people will walk out of your life but amazing people will run into it. There will be times when life gets hard and being able to process those emotions will be critical. You’ll lose faith in yourself and humanity and there will always be people in the world that restore it.
Your life will become a light not only on a local level but on a national a global level. Emeka, you will discover strengths that you didn’t know you had. You will live life to its fullest. You will go places and do things that you couldn’t even imagine before.
What you don’t know is that right now, it feels like you are being buried by life. The reality is that you are actually being planted. Hang in there because fruit is on its way. -Emeka