Letters To Our Younger Selves

A Letter About What Makes Me, Me

Dear Reader,

My name is Lucas Harmon, and I am a student at Belmont University. For a group project in our English class this semester, we were given the task of putting together a project that could be shared with the masses. A project that centers around the idea of how each of us has found/is finding our “voice”. As a group of four, we decided that we would write letters about how our past experiences and what we’ve gone through have shaped us over time. Once these letters were complete, our goal was to share these letters with the public, which we did, one letter from each of us, with the hope that someone would read our stories and be able to relate and connect in their own way. This is one of those four letters.

For the majority of this letter, I strive to be honest and authentic in explaining my “story,” the way I see it… Thank you for taking the time to read my story.

When I was young, some unfortunate situations occurred within my family. This may sound rather vague, but I would like to share some of my journey with you, how I grew up, how that changed my perspective on the world around me, and how I learned to turn negatives into positives, move forward, and find my voice. At times, as you read this, you may wonder why I’m sharing certain details, but I promise that by the end, it will all make sense.

When it comes to how I found my voice through my past, a lot of it has to do with my family, relationships, friendships, and social experiences – more specifically, much of this part of my story has to do with my mother and my home environment growing up.

Let’s get straight to it: I grew up in a small town in Connecticut. After my parents divorced when I was nine, my mother started seeing her high school and college boyfriend, Charles, once again. They stayed together for a few years, and before I knew it, Charles lived with us. He quickly became nothing short of a father figure to me, and my connection with him will always be something that I hold on to as special, given that period in my life.

During this time, my mother was developing severe nerve damage. She had Type II Diabetes, and serious neuropathy was beginning in her ankles and feet. For those who don’t know, neuropathy is defined as “when nerve damage leads to severe pain, weakness, numbness or tingling in one or more parts of your body.” Because of the increasing chronic pain, my mother often lashed out at her kids (my older sister, Ella, and me), but, even when those outbursts happened during this time, Charles was there to calm her down.

It was the end of my third day of fifth grade. I remember getting off the school bus and beginning my five-minute walk home. When I arrived, I could tell something was off. My mother was crying in the dining room, and the rest of the house was silent. As I passed her room, I saw Charles packing his things. I realized what was happening, he was leaving – and I tried to stop it. Before this day, I had no idea this was coming. As a last resort, I ran to his car and sat in the driver’s seat, refusing to get out. Eventually, Charles came outside with a few large suitcases, followed by my mother and sister. It was a deeply emotional moment for our family. My mother told me to get out of the car; I did. Charles got in, drove away, and that was it.

This affected me and my family deeply. In many ways, Charles had been my stability. My real father wasn’t very present at that stage in my life, and my mother, as I mentioned, was facing her own challenges.

In the years that followed, my mother’s condition worsened – her pain grew more severe, her anger more frequent – as years of experiencing chronic pain tends to do to someone, it began to affect her brain and overall behavior. Eventually, there was no reasoning with her. She was always right, and you were always wrong. When my sister was still home, she bore the brunt of it to protect me, and I’ll always be grateful for that. But when Ella left for college, I was fourteen, and suddenly, it was just my mother and me.

Those years were rough. We had to move three times, and with limited help – and a mother who could barely get around – most responsibilities fell on my shoulders. When I was fifteen, my mother suffered a bad fall, tearing both of her achilles tendons. She was confined to a wheelchair and unable to drive for nearly two years. The loneliness and pain took an even greater toll on her. I couldn’t yet drive, so I relied on my bike, rides from friends’ parents, and the occasional Uber ride to get around.

They say “Hindsight is 20/20”, and looking back, it is quite clear that I was more of a caretaker, proverbial punching bag, and therapist than a child to my Mother, and this lasted until I was 19 and headed off to college. You could even say, at times, that I played more of the role of a parent than my mother actually did. But, you see, there is a silver lining to all of this. Dealing with these intense emotions at such a young age, I began a cycle where I would feel very deeply, and that fueled my drive to create. An interesting at-home environment can come with some perks as well. At a young age, I very quickly realized that I had a deeper understanding of my emotions than most of the kids around me, and on top of that, I had a lot of independence; I could create what I wanted whenever I wanted to. Something clicked in me, “I’m going to get out of here, I’m going to do it”, and “it” was my dream. You can choose the way to look at the hands you are dealt, and after seeing how much my sister was affected in her later years by everything that occurred in our childhood, I strived to take a different path, I was going to have a different perspective, a different point of view, and most of all, my own voice. I wasn’t just going to lie down and let my past own me. I was going to dig in because if I didn’t want to let this control my life, I had to start now – and thank god that was clear to me back then.

It wasn’t long before I began making scripted shows on YouTube, a comedy, and a drama, and some of these got noticed, leading to acting in various other small projects at the time. I was also a musician, taught myself the piano, and began writing, recording, and independently releasing my own music – although my parents had their major flaws during this time, they were always supportive of what I wanted to do, and I am beyond grateful for that. 

By the end of high school, I was moving. I was constantly out of the house in an effort to stay away, which resulted in consistently meeting new people and being thrown into new situations, and although I didn’t love this at the time, I see that as a gift now, a gift of experience. In fact, all of what I’ve mentioned and haven’t mentioned in this answer, I’ve, over time, learned to see as a gift in an odd and distorted way. Instead of letting unfortunate situations put out your fire, why not let the emotion behind them fuel it instead? So, as I mentioned, today, I’m a student at Belmont University in Nashville, TN, with a major in Motion Pictures. I attend in an effort to learn and take a step forward toward my dream career of being an actor and film producer. Outside of school, I intern at Brigade Media Capital, helping out at Range Media Partners under William Lowery. On top of that, I regularly put out original music, I act in various film and TV projects throughout the year, and at the center of it all, I have my feature film set to shoot in 2026. In December of 2023, I flew to New York City to pitch a feature film, where I would ideally act as the lead role, write, and produce, and by some act of god or goodwill, it worked. William Atticus Parker signed onto the project as a producer, and things are truly moving now. Life is busy, but ain’t that the fun of it… I love to create, I love to be vulnerable in sharing emotion, and more than anything, I love to feel and connect. That is why I do what I do, and that is why I am grateful for everything that I have gone through. 

Everything I do is in an effort to connect with people, share my voice, and find that sense of family. In conclusion, this is some of what my essay will focus on. I’ve got big dreams and even bigger plans, which require a lot of energy, and my past is the biggest source of drive/energy that I have. My experiences are what put me ahead of the crowd in the ways that I am, and hell, I’m proud of that, and I wouldn’t trade them for the world. Life has taught me that as time goes on, to understand that I will make mistakes, I will ‘fail’, I  may ‘lose’ even when I have done nothing wrong, and other times I will win, whether I’ve earned it or not – life is funny like that, it’s just how it goes. You can’t control everything that happens to you, but as many wiser people have said before me, you can control how you choose to react and move forward when presented with all types of situations.

That is my take, that is how I am going to play this life I’ve been given, and I decided that a long time ago. That is my voice.

Thank you for reading.

Sincerely,
Lucas Harmon

LucasHHarmon@gmail.com