Hello 2010, this is your past self calling

So I am finally doing the impossible and attempting to throw away all the stuff I have filling cupboards and drawers in my room at my parents house. I have gotten rather side tracked on account of unearthing a sealed envelope instructing me not to open it until I was aged at least 24 along with all the notebooks my friends I used to write letters to each other, every night all through high school.

The letter to myself is your typical teenage angst (written April 2002 - I was 17) wrapped up with a healthy dose of self pity, however the final paragraph is rather more deserving of a second look:

I hope by the time I read this again I will be a different person and I'll be happy in my own skin. I hope I'll know who I am, where I'm going and if I don't know I hope I won't mind not knowing. All I really want for myself for the future is to be at peace with myself. For the people around me? Well, I want for them to be happy, for them to still be around me as well I suppose. For the world at large? I'd like for it to be at peace with itself too and for their (sic) to be good shit flying around really

I'll just have to keep hoping I suppose

If I'd read that cold I'd have been all "well none of that has happened! My life is a waste!" but reading it in context of the rest of the moaning letter? Wow, I've come a long way, and from the perspective of that 17 year old, I am happy in my skin, I am a different person.  I know who I am and I have a reasonable idea, if not of where I'm going, then at least how I might start to get there.

All in all, it's been rather nice to see. I think I will write another letter to myself with a minimum 7-years-sealed note on the front, and include this one and stash it away once again in the box with all my other letters.