A letter

Hey me, 

I’ve been thinking about many things lately. The quarantine has put a lot of things into perspective. At times, I’ve felt just like we did back in high school. It’s been incredibly hard for me to revisit things I thought I’d buried for good. I think, despite it all, that seeing who I was and who I am now juxtaposed helped me see some things clearer. This letter will never reach you, but this is what I’d tell you, if I could. 

Summer does come. The winters are unending here in Canada, and sometimes it feels like we’ll never be warm again. But I’ve waited the winters out, and I can tell you, from the other side, that it does get better. Maybe better is not precise enough for your liking. It gets better – not easier, necessarily. I’ve adapted, and it really is so much better now. 

Were we to meet, I wonder if you’d see yourself in me. I think you’d be surprised that I would be the one admiring you from afar. I hope I never forget how it was to be 14, 16, 18, and full enough to burst. You were so strong. So incredibly resilient in the face of the hardest battles you’ve ever fought. I need that strength now, to keep growing into who we always wanted to be. 

Would it help to know that I took your hopes and dreams and made them into tools? I remember the countless nights we spent thinking about how much we hated our social anxiety, our caginess, our resentful thoughts… I’ve started taking them out, hook and root, and I hope something else will grow in their place. You’re not the monster you paint yourself to be. There is no black and white. Learn to paint in greys, little bird.  

I’ve been feeling trapped, these past few months. That’s something that’s helped me see where you end and I start, breaking the never-ending cycle of the ouroboros. The cage I built around myself, around my thoughts and desires, never felt suffocating before I realised that I do wish for a better tomorrow. Someone very important to me helped me realise that recently. I do have hope for the future, and I do see myself years down the road. I have hope that, one day, I’ll be able to spread my wings and fly.  

When I tell you this, I’m also telling myself: we’ll be fine. We’ll be fine, because we have so much inside of us left yet. We’re a glass filled to the brim, ready to burst with feelings and ideas. On the nights where you doubt your own existence, the tangibility of your very flesh, I’d like to remind you of this: we’re so much more than the racing thoughts making the rounds in our head. We are brave, unapologetic, and stronger than we give ourselves credit for being.   

I haven’t had to use the little things that kept us alive for over a year now. Occasionally, when the night gets really bad, I turn the songs back on and try to look at the sky longer than I do at my feet, I remember how it was to despair so completely. And I smile. Because I’m not you anymore, despite the slip-ups. Because I am stronger than I was at 18. Because I’m now looking forward to the day when the songs and the pictures will be remembered with fondness instead of hopelessness.

In the end, there’s so many things to say and so few words. I don’t know how to tell you this, how to make you understand that hope does exist, that you can kindle it like a fire. That it wasn’t lost when you made your first mistake. I’ve lived longer than we ever expected, and I can tell you with the strength of many winters and summers under my belt that mistakes don’t define who we are. When I look at myself in the mirror, I see opportunity, authenticity, and renewal. We are not doomed to repeat past mistakes. Snakes shed their skin and grow, before the cycle starts again.   

I’ll tell you words a man I admire said, to close: stay strong, live on. And also, we did it. We did it. 

Love, 

me.