Dear those who have doubted me (whoever you may be),

November 11, 2016 was a day that I will not forget for a number of reasons. On that day, I was still reeling from the reality of Donald Trump being elected president three days earlier, and maybe you were too. But that trauma subsided for most of November 11, when I received an email that I was accepted into my top choice for college, DePaul University. Right now, it’s been just over a year ever since I got that email, but despite only being 365 plus days ago, my life has transcended with new ups and downs as well as gains and losses.

November 11 was not just a day of celebration for me, but it was also a day where I proved you wrong. I proved you wrong in that you thought I was not going to go anywhere, and that I had no direction in this wild thing called life. I proved you wrong in that time after time again I was consistently being disrespected by you, and that you were wasting my ever-valuable time, something that is so precious nowadays. Not anymore.

Here at DePaul, as this fall quarter wraps up, I found a new community where no one perceives my voice as an outlier or a liability. Whether it be here at Odyssey or the DePaul Socialists or the many other people I have met through classes and excursions, everyone here considers every voice a vital component in how we make this world better, which is clearly a concept that you fail to understand. You fail to understand that the world does not empathize with your apathy.

To be frank, I really don’t think I can fully forgive you for the amount of time and energy that you have wasted from me, but in the end I think there’s more greatness than came out of it than bad. As radical as that sounds, let me just follow that up with a great big thank you.

Thank you for teaching me to conserve my energy and time on people just as how you would conserve money. Time and energy are just as precious as money is, even though it seems like it is so abundant that it is endless. But the reality is when you have that thought process, you start to become emotionally drained, which is something I felt as I invested too much time in you, and you failed to return the favor.

I also want to thank you for giving me motivation. You have motivated me to do better, and if I thought I was better, I would keep going the extra mile. Because of your unfortunate choice to inflict shame upon me, it was exactly that which motivated me to get into such a prestigious institution like DePaul.

So, to wrap it all up, I want to give you full credit for being my biggest motivator to become the best that I can be. Let November 11, 2016 be the day in which you know that you failed. You failed at knocking down the house of cards you thought you saw, but what you got was just scratching a fortress. I’m not as religious as I used to be, but sometimes I pray that hopefully you will not continue to have the narcissistic attitude you continue to have. I believe that there is hope and room for anyone to redeem themselves from the vices that they hold, and it is my greatest hope that you become that saved person. And once you come to that realization, you’re more than welcome to come back into my life, otherwise I’m not going to waste my time anymore.

Okay, that’s it. Now I’m going to catch up on sleep I lost studying for finals.

Peace!

Regards,

-P.E.