When I was growing up, money was always a problem. I saw my parents working _______at their jobs for decades trying to make enough to _______ the mortgage (房屋抵押贷款) and feed three kids. My parents _______ complained and seemed happy _______ we didn’t have a lot.

I’m now the age my parents were when they _______. Unlike them, I don’t have any mouths to _______, I don’t have a mortgage to pay, and I fortunately have a job with a _______salary than average. From an outsider’s _______ of thinking I should be very happy, but in fact I’m not. Here’s why.

Well, _______ is a funny thing. You think that by having it you will be ________. Once you start making some and realize it’s not making you happy, you think maybe it’s because you don’t have ________. So you trade your ________ for money, sometimes working at a job you don’t even like to make more money.

As time goes on, you ________ you’ve been spending more and more time at work. Family and friends wonder why you don’t ________ them any more. As you climb up the corporate (企业) ladder, you feel more ________ and anxious than you did before. You find you don’t sleep so well any more. You find the stress of the work more than what you ________ for. Also, in order to live a better life, the cost of keeping up with the ________ is starting to add up and you’re not making as much as you thought you would be. ________, you’re worried about losing the few friends you have because you’re earning more money than they are. Coworkers think you have it all and that you must be happy. If only that were ________. Only you can ________your happiness, money can’t buy that for you.

I had reached the age of twenty-eight. Still, I _______ whether the letter from my past would make it to me, all these years later. It was a（n） _______writing task from when I was eighteen. The teacher collected our letters to our _______ selves in self-addressed envelope with stamps and _______ to mail them ten years later. But since so much time had passed, would he _______ remember?

_________ the letter, I recalled giving my future self some advice. When you're eighteen Years old, twenty-eight seems like a _______age, but I wasn't feeling as mature as I believed my younger self had _______me to be.

When the letter finally reached me, I opened it _______. It began, “How much do you bet this letter will never get to you? ” It continued to greet me casually ________we were having an IM (instant messaging) chat. As a senior in high school, facing the________SATS and college application, my eighteen-year-old self was so stressed! She was ________ not quite happy and hoped I wouldn't worry so much in the future, and that I wouldn't forget to be present and________my life!

________to my belief, my eighteen-year-old self did not have any demands of me, or expectations I might have ________ meet. Instead, she wrote, “I'll ________whatever you do. Even if you are not the one I'm imagining now, I'll ________ you, because maybe who I'm imagining is someone else, but you're not someone else, you're me.

I was touched, and tears welled up in my eyes at this________ through time. I had put a lot of pressure on myself to be the best ________ of myself that I could be. However, I came to realize what I would have ________ in ten years would pale in comparison to how I'd feel and who I'd be.