This comes from a Poets and Writers non-fiction writing prompt:
Write a poem in the form of a letter to an imaginary friend in which you ask them for help that begins, Dear Friend. Keeping the person or creature or entity you’re writing to in mind, include details and images that reveal your imaginary friend’s characteristics as you craft your entreaty.
Dear Friend,
I have never been known for brevity. Strap in.
The bottom line is that I need help. Help in all the ways that a 35-year-old needs help. At 35, you’ve got some things about life squared away, and the rest is still a swirling mess from your childhood, those things that make you you. 35 is the time where you decide to stop putting up with your own shit and decide what kind of person you are, despite all your family and friends.
It’s not that you couldn’t earlier in your life. It’s that you don’t have enough experience to see the wisdom that comes from processing that sort of thing. By 35, you have the things that happened to you earlier in your life, and now you want to know why… possibly because it’s stopping you from growing into the next phase of your life, and possibly because you all of the sudden have a lot of free time, since there’s rarely a rave to which you’ll be interested or invited.
A lot of memoirs are written around this time, because even though your thirties aren’t the time to pack it in and call it quits, people like to kind of see where they are… especially bloggers.
Bloggers have the ability to stop using writing as an outlet and start using it as a comprehensive reflection on life. Most of the time, it leads to insight. Some of the time, it leads to hysterical laughter. But the hope of the blogger is not to change him/herself. It is to release the emotions surrounding the story in hopes of putting it in the air. People comment and connect to what they recognize, and might offer a different perspective altogether. Bloggers need that. They need a chance not to be adored, but to be heard.
Although adored is good, too.
Here’s where you come in, dear friend.
Your job is to read what I write, and respond if you feel so inclined. Just knowing that I have an audience reading and making sure I’m not completely insane is a good thing to know. I carry it with me always.
You are my thanksgiving, you are my Christmas morning.
Amen.
Stories That Are All True 