The Game of Life

An Open Letter to the Me of 2015
Dear Me,
I would ask you how your freshman year is starting,
But since it’s only been three years, I still remember it
All of the partying and football games and Burnett's drinking
So I know that you’re doing well.
College is crazy, and I could write you a textbook full of things I wish you knew,
But we both know you don’t do assigned readings.
So allow me to translate. As those first grades you just got back indicate, you love to play some games.
Here are three things I wish I could tell you
The old me, myself, and I transcribed to the tune of Family Game Night

One. Monopoly was not designed to be a metaphor for your love life,
So retain a monopoly on your own autonomy
And stop allowing these niggas to collect rent on your best properties.
Your mama'nem sent you to school to learn
Not to spend all your time trying to spin somebody’s son into gold,
Spoiler alert: making your backbone the doormat will not license you to flip a house into a home.
And another thing,
Please stop giving boys get out of jail free cards simply for placing their token on the board,
Because even your self-doubt will get bored from watching you settle so much.
Baby girl I KNOW you think you grown. But riddle me this:
How does investing love into other people when your self-esteem hasn’t developed its own income yet makes any business sense?
So, next time somebody rolls up on you trying to mortgage some of your love with bad credit,
Do not just pass go, RUN to it.

Two. That board game you and your sister used to play: the Game Of Life is not like the game that is life.
In that game, purpose is a path that comes one size fits all and the spinner is what sets your tempo instead of your own resolve.
Don’t believe the hype. Your future is a lil more DIY than that, like a game of MASH
So take pen and paper and draw out your own dreams.
People will try to convince you that playing it safe is an acceptable route to take. But it is not.
Understand this
Regardless of which major makes the most money; it is better to chase waterfalls than job safety
Because those rivers and lakes that others are used to all run off into the ocean
Where your body will sink,
And be crushed under all of the pressure God designed for somebody else’s destiny, Can’t you taste the saltwater in your STEM courses?
Do not spend your semesters wasting credit hours, your summers building somebody else’s dream resume, and your nights praying over your GPA and asking God to deliver letters He never meant to be addressed to you.
Get it together.

Three.
The more cards you deal yourself, the more you cannot deal with yourself.
Being busy bodied will not body your budding anxiety because the validation of your peers will not pay you enough to afford the price of a poker face,
The gold medals they’ll award you for running from yourself
will bend when you bite into them to feed your soul, which is to say-
They are not real.
Not real important, not real helpful, not even made of real metal,
And meddling with your feelings by pretending to be a better emotion than you are will not win you any Emmys; your mental illness is not a motion picture.
And it took me two too many breakdowns to get the picture,
See, I used to play solitaire with my anxiety, which is to say I used to play myself.
And I don’t do that no more.
Double negative intended, because sometimes I slip up and do,
But at least I no longer confuse solitude with solutions. I now know better.
Solitaire might be a great game to play on a rainy day, but isolating yourself will not chase your storms away. It only makes them wetter.

So, to the girl I used to be freshman year,
Growing up is not a game, but college kind of is.
And it’s not like Spades, where one moment you’re too little to learn how to play and the next you’re too late
You learn lessons every second
And even though it takes a couple of forevers to figure out how the rules go,
By the time you are twenty-one and almost a half years old
And graduation is only one course registration away,
By the grace of God
At the game’s end,
Girl you…or I…well, we
We win.