Apollo Fields | Dear Blank | Terrence Huie | Dear 23-Year-Old-Terrence

“Dear 23-Year-Old Terrence,

I hate to tell you but your dreams of becoming a rapper in New York City didn’t come tru. You did perform original poetry in front of audiences so I have to give you that. And you got paid for it. That’s worth something.

Right now you’re probably unpacking your stuff at Rutgers; six months before you decide that writing for The Daily Targum and studying Confucius isn’t enough. The people you meet there never amount to anything more than status updates on your Facebook feed. You are starting on the road to idealism with the fervor of naïveté at your back.

Nobody tells you that the impulse to throw yourself headlong into an endeavor is strongest in your twenties. Or at least nobody told you. How pulling a thread unravels the sweater into so many colors that you’ve never seen before. In your thirties you start to fall in love with sweaters. Somehow it’s always cold.

I’m proud of you the way a father is of their child after they lose their first peewee game. “Don’t hang your head—you’ll get ‘em next time.” I don’t know why consolation always felt condescending, but it totally did. I don’t mean it that way. I mean it in the way I never felt that our dad was proud of us.

And it’s not that he wasn’t or isn’t, it’s that we never believed him. He never had the time to make us believe him. He does now. But the words are still just words, like a voice with no air to carry it. Did you know that an explosion is silent in outer space?

I didn’t mean to air that dirty laundry but that’s what happens when you declutter a room. You find things. Well I just wanted to tell you that you found one helluva partner and fell into one helluva life. It all started by you pulling on that thread. It’s 10 years later and i’m still warm. And I still don’t really like sweaters.

Your grateful future self,

Terrence”