Hello, McKinley. Do you still go by McKinley? What about your old last name — have you kept that? I don't know what you're doing — I don't know where you're living, in New York like you always imagined or back in North Carolina like you always hoped, or if you have a husband with sandy hair who loves you or if you have a couple sandy-haired dogs instead. Maybe you have both.

I hope you have both. You always wanted both. I hope you're happy. I hope your better half smiles down at you and touches your face before turning out the light each night. I hope your dogs sleep at the foot of your bed and shed everywhere.

Were you finally able to figure out how to put yourself first? You used to be so pliable — to a fault, in fact. You made yourself small so other people could be large. I hope you've finally learned how to be brave, not just to get what you want, but to be who you want, as well.

If you knew one thing at 17, it was that finding your own happiness is imperative to doing anything else. You went looking for that, once upon a time. You ended up in a really big city with a lot of noise pollution and an overpopulation issue. You loved it there, so much.

But I guess you know that, don't you? Hopefully time has been kind to you and you can still remember the feeling of being 17 years old, wide-eyed and open-hearted to the world. Surely in hindsight you realize you've never been as much of an island as you always liked to think yourself. You always needed people a little bit more than you were willing to admit.

I can't wait to meet you and everyone you've surrounded yourself with. Are you getting on all right without the family you loved so much? Everyone must have left you, by now. I know they didn't want to. You have to know that, too. I'm writing this letter to you the year Daddy turns 70. I don't know what that must feel like for him, what he must be thinking, but I guess now, you do.

I want to know all about you. Who knows, maybe you decided you loved that Springsteen record "Nebraska" so much, you packed up and moved there. Maybe you never got those Saint Bernard dogs like you wanted at 15. Maybe you abandoned writing, turned cold against it by the ever-growing politics involved. Maybe you taught history for 40 years and bought yourself a lifetime subscription to "Time" as a retirement gift instead of "The New Yorker."

Or maybe you never got to stay in one job for 40 years; maybe you don't even exist—maybe you never get the chance to build this long of a life, and I'll never get to meet you. So it goes.

Regardless, no matter how old you grew or how old you've grown, I hope, above all else, that you haven't grown old.

I hope you still watch all those TV shows and movies you loved when you were younger. I hope you still read fanfiction. I hope you still write fanfiction. Even if you don't write professionally anymore, I hope you do still for yourself. Remember your senior year of high school, anxious for your first poetry publication, refreshing your email every ten minutes. Remember the feeling of holding a book in your hands and knowing it like the backs of your hands.

Hold onto that enthusiasm. Never let it go. Keep it in a Word doc buried in your hard drive, or between the pages of a Moleskin fraying at its softcover edges. When you're lost, when you don't know what to do, let that wide-eyed open-heartedness that once guided you guide you yet again.

Whether you're in New York or North Carolina or Nebraska, make sure that place allows you to be the best version of yourself. If it doesn't, leave. It's never too late. Take your husband's hands in your own and ask him what he thinks about moving South again, or back to the City, or somewhere else, somewhere new.

Or if you don't have that husband, if it's just you and your books and your dogs, just pack it all up and go. Maybe now is the time you get to make decisions without considering anyone else. I wish you had known at 17 that doing so is not as selfish as it sounds.

McKinley, at 70 years old — no matter if that's your name or you're living alone or you even exist, I wish the best for you. You've had time now to learn from your mistakes, time to grow into your own skin. Make the most of it.

I think part of you expected to know it all at 17. Maybe now, at 70, you still don't know it all, but you have finally realized that's okay. You don't have to have all the answers all the time. You don't have to be immaculate to be enough.

And you have always been, even when you have felt so far from it, enough.