This is the letter I wrote to myself

My mother called EF tours today at 1:45 p.m. and cancelled my Australia trip. They will send a check for $2850, which I will give to my orchestra teacher, who will give it to my anonymous benefactor, along with my letter of explanation.
I feel choked up inside about it. But I think I did the only thing I could do.

I got this letter in the mail today that I wrote for myself at Civitan. (They have us write them to our future selves, and they mail them in the middle of the winter, months after June).

These letters are always a bit weird, because around Christmas you'll read this and try to remember the wyou you were now, and you'll feel a bit split. But we are all the same person in the end.
I have been bouncing up and down a lot, but the experience was still amazing. Having Josh, Olivia, and Emily here made me feel so safe and protected.
I know there will be slipups between now and when you read this, but the sine wave is not depressed; it always comes back up again. Remember how you felt this week when everything was perfect... when you were hypomanic and hyper but confident and so authentically happy. Remember the roof. You were so real in that moment, panic attack and all.
Believe in yourself, because you have it in you. It comes out the most at Civitan. You don't have to care what other people think about you. You don't have to try to be cool. You can be yourself, and it's enough. If it's not enough for someone, they're not worth pretending for anyway.
I (you) stood in the lobby and jumped up and down and screamed to kareokie (sp?), and I was young. Nothing else mattered, really, except all of the possibilities that moment bore. Right now, your future holds the most possibilities and opportunities that it will ever hold. Every second you spend regretting, every second you spend wearing a mask, every second you spend obsessing about saying the right things is a wasted second, a crashed possibility.
You ran around with shaving cream in your contacts and your boyfriend wiping it off of you even as you smashed him in the face and hives appeared on your arm, and you were happy. The maks and the fear and the threat of failure and regrets can never give you that.
-Lindsay
Carpe diem.
NNGUNNGU
Don't forget.

I'm not sure if this letter helps me at all to decide which of my options was better in this hard decision I have made, but I believe it is telling me not to regret choosing to go to nationals. Nationals was an opportunity, a possibility, and if I believe in myself and practice very hard, I have it in me, I know I do.

No time for regrets, or life is mine to miss.