Hey dude, you just got your driving license; slow down and you'll avoid those first couple tickets you'll get when you're cruising in your mother's Ford Taurus, making trips to the store and blasting Eddie Money on the radio, feeling like the coolest guy in the world at the moment. What belies you is going to need quite a man, and even when you read this letter when you're 32, you're not going to know if you're that man who can bear it.
You're going to realize your dreams in baseball. You're working hard right now, lifting those weights every single day in your parents basement on that elementary weight bench. You're learning how to train, and you're going to mostly write happy endings in the thing you love most. You'll prove to yourself in time what kind of character you have, you'll pass the tests on the stages you reach along the way between the white lines, and others will recognize exactly who you are by what you do on a baseball field. When your time at Olentangy is done, you'll be a respected and valued member of that team, and playing baseball is going to define your entire life path you take; well almost. More on that later.
When your time at Olentangy is finished, you'll head to Ohio Wesleyan and you'll think it's going to be the same type of thing you encountered at OHS. There will be some obstacles for you in the beginning, but you know you can play. You're confident on this in your heart - if you're given the opportunity, you'll be able to do it. You get into the fun and evils of college life pretty hard from the beginning. You've always liked the feeling you get when you drink a few beers. You are a sweet and shy kid for the most part. You drink beers because partly you have an addictive personality and you like the buzz, and you also like how it makes you become the funny guy. Sometimes it makes you become the asshole. If you don't watch it, you'll have some close brushes with death and the law down your path with this stuff. Have your fun, but take it easy at times too.
Back to Wesleyan - you drink too much at first. You also eat everything in site. You've never had to really worry about nutrition. You've always been 180 lean pounds or less. When you get to Wesleyan you're going to gain about 50 more your freshman year from drinking beer, eating pizza, hitting up the ice cream stand. Don't do that. You're there to play ball. Get sleep, continue working out. But you won't, and it's going to effect you. You're going to be really out of shape, and although you can still hit; you always could, your coach up there isn't going to like you for one particular reason or another from the beginning because he sees something in you that bothers him. He doesn't know the real you. Because you're shy, you never really approach him. Your entire freshman year will pass and despite showing some great flashes, they'll be overshadowed.
I know you don't let it get you down, because you believe in yourself. I know that you still do when you're 19 years old because that summer you drop those 50 pounds in one summer by running mile after mile in that Branch Rickey field house you went to baseball camp in as a youngster over christmas break. You lift weights every day. You return to school that fall in the best shape of your life. You're determined to not let anything hold you back. You're ready. The first day of practice though, you're going to be expected to run the 60 yard dash. When you run it, you're going to be one of the slowest guys out there despite looking to be in great shape. This happens because no one told you that jogging 3 miles a day ruins your fast-twitch muscles. Your speed is gone forever. The speed you had in high school isn't coming back, you'll never really find a way to regain it. And they want speed at Wesleyan as you've learned.
Do not get down about this. You'll get your one official hit - a double off the wall your senior year that you crush off a great pitcher - and its more sentimental at that point to you. You prove to yourself again that you have done it, you have reached your personal mountain top at that point.
Your baseball was what ended up leading you to that school will bear the greatest fruits and gifts of your entire life. I wish I could tell you that it's there you'll have the greatest times of your life, you'll laugh the hardest, you'll achieve good things in the classroom, you'll meet lifelong friends who will give you jobs, be your shoulder to cry on. You're even going to walk right into your wife at that school, the girl you have never even able to dream about being this wonderful. You'll meet her your senior year, just outside your door when - you guessed it - you're drinking beers and heading out to play darts. Protect this girl. Be good to this girl. She's an angel, she's a good one. She's going to be there for you always. She loves like you do - she's a Scorpio. Loyal to the bitter end. This is a part I don't have to tell you. Your love for family and those close to you has always been something at your core and at the bottom of your pyramid. No matter where life takes you, no matter what happens to you, you're always going to love your family and your friends like it is the number one thing in your life. This is probably the best thing about you that you'll see when you look in the mirror.
And on that point - you're going to lose two people very soon - in back to back years who are everything to you. God has been good to you protecting your loved ones. But in 2005 your Grandpa is going to slip away. You're doing a good thing by realizing what's happening at your college age stopping by their house and doing your homework there. Staying there until 10 or 11 at night when they go to bed while your buddies are up the street drinking beers. They value that, and you need to cherish these times. Your grandpa will be gone before you know it, and you'll take it pretty hard. This pales in comparison to what it's going to do to you the following year when your grandma goes in 2006. She'll get to see you graduate. You'll shake off your hangover wearing your cap and gown like a champion to smile when that little old woman is standing next to you. You know it's special that she's there. She's proud of you, and you're even more proud of her for how strong she's carried on without the only person she loved in 50+ years. It's amazing to you, and she's amazing to you. Your first year out of college when you start to spiral into some bad places with alcohol, taking the night off doing it to go watch baseball with her will be some of the times you cherish most with her in your life. As the months wind down, these will be some of the last times you spend with her. You just don't know it. When she passes and you get that phone call at work you know right away something is bad. You're feeling it for the first time in your life, that feeling. You need to rely on your faith in God in these times. But like your entire life you know he's there but fail to do it properly. Your grandmother moves on to Heaven, and you know she's there as one of your angels watching over you. Instead of being a man about loss, you're the last one to leave her grave that day. You sit there seemingly forever until you get up and you go home. That night you'll drink until you can no longer remember the night.
From there you continue to spiral downward with the bottle. You fall into that addictive place, and you run with a gang of great guys who are just that; good guys who enjoy a good time. You still feel pretty bullet proof at this age, but something is about to happen to you that will rock your entire core and change your life forever. One of the positives is it's going to make you stop drinking.
In 2007 you're going to start to feel some strange feelings health wise. They won't make sense then, and it's going to be a long road for you that never gets answered. By summer of 2008, you'll know some of the monster that you face with your health. When you get a diagnosis, you're going to feel relieved. But son, your troubles are only just beginning.
Lyme disease.... you will make fun of your fiance many times for this, calling her your little lymie. Little did you know that this would be the very disease that would test you as a man. It will test the foundation of your spirit.
Between the long and winding roads are stops along the way that are good for you. You've always wanted to get married and in 2011, you have a day that you consider is the best day of your life. It's going to be September 3rd of that year. At that time, you feel pretty good all things considered. The bugs that are inside you are in hiding at that point. You're back drinking again, and when you do, you overdo it still. When you look in your brides eyes that day, you know you're saying words and taking vowels that you'll never give up on. You just know it like you've known nothing before in your life. It makes you cry because deep inside you, you are still that sweet kid who started out at 16 on this journey playing ball. You will thank God for that day many times over, because it was out of a storybook.
More trouble will befell you again down the road causing you to question many deep things in the world like your very existence. In 2012 you're going to start to feel very strange again. So badly that you think you're dying. You're actually sure that you are. You will ask your father if you are dying. You lean on your parents because you love them intensely, and they've always been your closest trusted individuals in your life. They're going to split up around the time you graduate from Wesleyan by the way - but that will have a somewhat happy ending.
You'll recover enough to have your true dream in life: you'll get to be a father. She's wonderful too. You know that little girl you dream of 100 times over in your dreams in the nine months your wife is pregnant? That perfect little girl? Well your little girl is going to be even more wonderful than that one. Only God could make something so amazing and so beautiful, and you sob like a baby when you see her for the first time because it's one of the most intense and treasured moments in your entire life. You know at that moment that if nothing else good happens to you, in 2014 you were given another angel. And you don't need to be told to value this kid of yours, because you do. She's going to be what keeps you going when you lie awake at night in chronic pain; wondering about ways out of the maze. She's the reason you climb out of bed to go to work. You think about disappearing to the world many, many times... but you'll never do it now because you have this little girl to answer for. She's so wonderful that you don't ever need another kid because nothing could ever top the feelings you have for her.
You're going to start to realize you're obsessive compulsive. The way you worry about yourself and your own health through what has happened to you has now carried over to her. You watch her like a hawk. Try to let her grow up a tough kid like her mom, it will be better for her. You will never be able to protect her every step, you'll drive yourself crazy trying as she gets older.
You worry about your parents too. You will cry yourself to sleep at night as a grown man because you're worried about your dad. You see your mother as strong as a rock; and she is. You worry about your sister - and these worries drive a wedge between you two when she's in high school. You worry she's headed down a bad path. But she's a good kid and she's going to right the ship and get to college. You don't need to worry about these things like you do. God will bless you by looking out for the three of them.
Shortly after you have your baby, you're going to encounter the worst beast of your life. A beast that has been brewing inside you for a decade. It's going to hit you, and it might kill you. People will doubt you again. It's going to come after your family, your job, your friendships, your social life, and even your faith. You know you have it inside you to do just one more day each day, but you don't know how to go about it. You're very blessed again; because that guy Joe who plays right field up at Wesleyan; one of the greatest players you've ever seen... he's going to offer you a job someday. For some odd reason he likes you. He likes you enough to teach you a new skill. He was the first person you ever met at Ohio Wesleyan when you were a senior in high school. God did this for a reason, because this man who is your friend offers you a job that you don't know if you should take. You take it, and you are decent at it.
You will be able to at least provide your family a living at this job while you are completely falling apart. There's some stressful moments, but when you cannot get out of bed or fall ill like you will almost weekly; this job will be the perfect spot to be in. You will spend a lot of your time dreaming about how great you could actually be if you weren't sick. This is a constant sense of obsession for you, and you need to stop looking at others and wishing you were healthy like them. God did this to you for a reason. Let me re-state that: God had this in his plans for some reason.
You know God is there. He shows you every day. You have made some frail attempts, and you occasionally talk to him, but you don't know if he trusts you. Maybe whats holding you back when you're 32 is that you don't really know if someone like you who sins over and over deserves to be trusted by God. You see better people than you every day have bad things happen to them - and you blame yourself for your agony. You will believe that you're paying for your awful things you did in some sick way of karma. You will go to your grave thinking this. Before it's too late, you're determined to make things right with God. Every day you look into your little girl's eyes you know God exists because you were given that miracle.
That girl you met in college turns into a wonderful mother, your best friend, and in many ways the greatest wife a man could ever ask for; but she is really put in a rough spot. You will feel like you wouldn't want to be married to someone like you. You will always try to do your best for them, you will put them first, and you will constantly remind her and your daughter that you love them just like you do your parents. You have always known life is delicate, and you feel it now more than ever. You will want your legacy to be how you treated people. This is strongest towards your wife and kid, and parents; but it will extend on down to your friends and people who just know you in passing like co-workers and virtual strangers.
You don't read the bible enough, you still do wrong and hold bitterness in your heart at times, you know right and still choose to do wrong, but you will do other things no one sees. Money has never meant anything to you, and probably never will. It's a blessing and a curse, but countless times you will hand a homeless stranger everything that is in your wallet and walking away you don't know why you did it. You'll give people the benefit of the doubt. When it comes right down to it, you will want to be known as this way. You do it because you think it's the right thing to do. You do it because it's easy. You have a desire in your heart to do nice things for other people. Giving your money away is easier to you then showing up at a soup kitchen or cancer ward. So you continue to do it.
You will probably wonder for the rest of your life whether you are a good or bad person. I am here to remind you that you will see people along the way who are far worse. I hope you can find peace with yourself before it's too late.
I am writing you this letter age 32 Clint; because I want to remind you to hang on and have faith. Hang on for those things you still hold dear. No matter what happens your family knows you love them, and people you come in contact with know you are sincere when you ask them how their day was, or ask about their kids and know their childrens names when they've mentioned them one time. You see the value in being a real person, despite some of your bitterness and hatred. Spend the rest of your days working on those things. Never give up the fight.
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