Embarrassing Letters II: My Response

My parents gave me all the financial support I would need for my 1983 hitchhiking trip. I sent the following letter after the trip, in November:     

Dear Mom and Dad,

Hello, it’s me, it may be cliché, but time certainly goes by very quickly. I find it amazing that I’ve been alive for nearly twenty years – that’s a long time for me – a lifetime in fact.

Throughout my life, or at least the at eight years I have rebelled against so many things ranging from private school to civilization. This may have all seemed ludicrous and counter-productive to you, but I think that I have achieved much in my personal development. Now, I see a very unpredictable future for me, but that’s the way I want it. I am happy. I love writing, filming and creating.

I don’t want you to be upset if I fail (not that I plan to) or drop out (again, not that I plan to), I refuse to enter any life that is not artistically creative. For me to achieve anything that I will be satisfied by, I must leave the norm, the average ‘desk job’; otherwise I will have failed my liberal goals. I doubt that this is what you will have wished for me, but there it is. I am what I am, and I won’t pretend to be anything else. (I feel that the Canada trip was brilliantly successful as it opened my mind to so many things and has motivated me to write a book of some sort.)

What can I say, I intend to stay in an artistic and undependable (sic) field, and I thank you for your love and help. So there you have it, no bullshit (there isn’t a suitable word), just honesty.

McP