Into The Past

[ 11/11/2021 ]

Dear Younger Me,

I haven’t forgotten you, not for a second. I promise you that, and I can prove it. I swear if you’re willing to hear me out, I can prove it before you register that you’ve lent me an ear.

Most of the time I recall you, the innocent and confused version of myself, what I feel is guilt. I know that I’ve failed you far too many times than a person deserves and I know that you deserved better. Because of the unnecessary shame and criticism you put on yourself that you should’ve never felt, you suffered miserably for years, trapped in a corner that didn’t allow you to blossom into the flower you could’ve become so much sooner.

I say “sooner” with pride. You do get there, eventually, even though it seems dark and you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel quite yet. It’ll start to glow down the road as long as you keep trudging ahead. You’ll reach it with only a small struggle and you’ll live happily from then on, content and satisfied with where time led you. I’m sorry to say that you don’t know everything about yourself yet, and that you’re still trying to fit the pieces together with a process of somewhat never-ending questions, but you will feel good about yourself and that’s a win, wouldn’t you think so?

If I still know you like I think I do, then it would easily be. Right now, your classmates and people who you’ve barely known for a couple of months are telling you your sexuality like they have the knowledge to do that. They’re telling you that they know you better than you know yourself, when you’ve been supposedly “stuck” with yourself for your entire life. They’re saying that you’ll only date women forever onward and that it’s a woman that you’ll one day marry, and I remember too, that it’s not that that you’re afraid of. You’d love that if you knew for certain that that was who you are. You’re afraid of caving into what everyone says you are because you wanted to figure out who you were and say who you are before people put a label on you first. Secretly, you’re fighting at least experimenting because you don’t want to say other people were right about you. Secretly, you wanted that to be a step you took on your own.

Trust me, I remember it like it was yesterday. I still hear your voice in the back of my head sometimes. You were robbed, little one. Robbed of time. You should’ve been allowed to do whatever you want and be proud of the person you are, but if I’m being honest, if I went back to be with you, I think I’d do the same thing over again. I hate being told who I am just as much as you do. That never really ends up going away, but it doesn’t end up being one hundred percent a bad thing. Maybe it is at first, but it unfolds into quite an awesome story.

When you get to 9th grade, you date a guy. You like him. At least you think you do, though there’s a nudge on your shoulder that you’re doing this just to prove everybody wrong. You shake that thought away though, and people are telling you that you’re good for him, so much that if you stay with him you’ll change him for the better. You interpret this as an assignment -- something that you’re absolutely required to do even when things get difficult or insincere. You bend over backwards for this man, giving out every effort you possibly can. It may come off as if you were begging him to stay with you, when you were too good for him all along. He cheats on you mid-relationship with a girl from his class and when you decide it’s best to reconcile so that people don’t think you give up so easily. You’re naive, you can’t deny that as much as you wish you can, but you learn. You learn that you should never waste your time on someone who views seeing you and caring about you as a chore. You have to know those people are messing around, and be aware that not everyone deserves your heart.

Don’t worry. You get over it. You turn out okay. Better than okay, actually. It’s those events that bring you me, a version of you that’s four years older and seasoned with some extra experience. You learn to say ‘no’ when people say you need a rebound boyfriend because the boy whose eyes you once stared into is on his third. You figured out that it doesn’t matter if it looks like you come out of a relationship as the weak one or not because there’s truthfully no winner or loser in that sort of bond, and if there is, you know that the stronger one is you. You stand your ground, boldly.

You took the time to figure out what you want in life and what you want to be when you get older. You improve your craft in the passions you have and you enjoy life the way it should be. You realize that the earth has a lot of good things to offer too, and that you were just unlucky in the earlier parts of your life, constantly getting the short end of the stick. You see that life is finally giving you your turn. The turn that you’ve been waiting for, that you’ve been deprived of. You see that it eventually comes around for you at your time.

No, you still don’t know exactly who you are when it comes to what you were searching for way back then. That turns out more complicated than you thought it would be, and honestly more complicated than I thought it would be. There’s a lot of questions to answer that are still left blank for now, but I’m not worrying about them too deeply that it becomes overwhelming. I think we’ve both learned that there’s no reason to do that to ourselves.

I’m confident that we’ll figure it out together. In the meantime, we’re happy on our own. We’re thriving with beautiful experiences that make the heart melt and burn in a hot fire. Our mind is overflowing with memories that we’re not ever going to forget. Not to be cliche, but I have faith that what we want in that criteria will come along when we're ready to understand it. We're happy with what we do know, and we love ourselves entirely regardless of what the mystery answers are.

Isn’t that what matters?

-Y.D.