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Dear Past Me,

A couple of months from March, you will forget about this book. You only ever wanted to fill it because your sister gave it to you, anyway. One day you will realize that maybe she never treated you right. That’s not really her fault, but you won’t be able to look her in the eyes for the longest time. You still can’t, not really. You’ve started trying to rebuild bridges that you burnt down between you and her, but it’s hard to create when all you have is a box of matches.

You don’t win your poetry competition—you will tell everyone that you knew you had no chance, but you and I both know you’ve seen too many movies to not have wanted the basketball to go through the hoop from the middle of the court with a second left to spare. You will not keep in touch with anyone from the competition. You will say that you do, but you don’t. That’s okay. You’re okay.

You’re more than okay. You’re loved. I know it sounds impossible to believe, and no, it’s not as magical as you decided it must be. Being loved is not the cure-all you expected. Being loved does not fix your holes and it does not flip your life around. Yes, some people will want to kiss you, but slowly you will realize that you might not want to be kissed at all. But you still want to be loved. You still want to be small. You still cry when someone tells you they believe in you. You still think you’ll let everyone down.

You get accepted into college—multiple colleges. You get accepted and you get enough money that going away is feasible. Congratulations, you get to get out of here, you get to remake yourself, you get to change your name. You get to never feel like this ever again.

You will probably feel like this no matter where you go.

You will probably always drive recklessly. You will probably always give too many pieces of yourself away, like your body and soul are on display at a yard sale, and you’re selling to the first interested customer. You will say “enough”, but you will always keep coming back for more. You will find out that people are hardly ever as bad as you think they are. You will be more disappointed to realize that they are rarely as good either. You’ll be a bleeding mess for so long, you’ll forget what healing is like. No one will show you. You do it yourself.

You will relapse—four times. You will have a relapse in a relapse and you will skip school for four days before you think you can come back.

You’ll be too honest with friends who aren’t honest with you, and you’ll regret so many words and you’ll regret the way they left your mouth, like bullets instead of olive branches. You’ll write angry poetry and bitter poetry and sad poetry and nostalgic poetry and in the hallways, you still won’t be able to look her in the eye.

You’ll still collect every compliment people give to you, off-handed or not. You’ll still check under your bed for monsters, you’ll always skip a handful of songs you refuse to delete. You won’t throw away old pictures of friends whose futures you’re not a part of. You’ll want to. For a while, it’ll hurt to look at them, like they’re reminders of everything you’ve ever lost. You’ll still come up with conversations and gifts to give to them that never go as planned, because you are not the same person anymore and they aren’t either.

You won’t always regret that.

You will be a hurricane and want to be a field of flowers. You will be a meadow and want to be a firestorm. You are none of these things. You are a year. You are all four seasons, with changes you can feel in your bones.

Please do not shy away from your solstices and equinoxes. You have experienced some of your darkest nights and longest days. But tomorrow will be better, I swear.

Yours eventually,
Catherine