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toerning — Read Me in 20 Years
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Published: 2014-01-08 04:33:20 +0000 UTC; Views: 21671; Favourites: 959; Downloads: 0
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I just moved and I was going through this old storage box and found a bunch of my old journals. This entry was a few days before I turned 16, so like 8 years ago. So amazing, so embarrassing, so hilarious.Copied the text as it appeared, and added illustrated commentary as a response. There's a lot I could say about this, but I think it's better to just let people have their own associations, when possible!
Edit- Check out the cheat sheet for answers/ some imagery explanations! toerning.deviantart.com/art/Re…
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Comments: 86
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Awww, this is rather impressive for sixteen years old. *hugs*
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Sounds like something I would write and I can relate a lot
But it's really beautiful
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This is lovely! I also recently found an old journal (I moved across the country about a year ago) and was amused. Your entry is much more mature and thoughtful than mine though I have to say! Less whining about how no one understood teenage me
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This is cool, being able to connect with your earlier self. Cool for others, now that I think about it; my young self would be ashamed of what I've let myself become. Too many roads, too many that lead us nowhere.
Sad and tired.
Cool art, either way.
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I've no words for how meaningful and well done this is.
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*tears* I love this so much. I write journals since I'm twelve, so it hits me hard every time I read them again. I'm 27 now.
Thanx for sharing this
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This...is...amazing. I love how your past self pointed out that she and her future self were going to be different people and have different memories. This is so beautiful. I can't believe you still have it after all those years and you posted it. Love this! <3
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Oh gosh; this made me cry for some reason. Beautiful letter to your future self!
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This is so beautiful. As someone who often writes in a "journal" (more like personal blog) I can relate to the notion of coming across something written by oneself quite a few years back...and actually it feels oddly inspiring, sometimes when you look back to it, you find all this youthful energy and positivity that you might've had to forgo for being too caught up in things..lol I'm just rambling, sorry if I don't make much sense. But basically, this is lovely and I love how you painted it too, absolutely beautifully handled! You're an amazing storyteller
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The questions asked sound uncomfortably familiar to every reader, and you found a very clever way for illustrating the way they made you feel years later. I feel that one of the most disturbing things that happens as we grow older, is realizing that we are not anymore able to take seriously some of the things that mattered most for us when we were younger. As if growing up meant at once two totally different sort of things: learning to resist to things we used to not even dream to resist to, as well as being taught to accept what we once deemed unacceptable. Or, less seriously put: as if growing up meant becoming more frivolous.
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That was pretty wonderful. I loved this as much as the answers. Great work.
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What a brilliantly intimate little piece! Thanks so much for sharing.
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Wow. This is truely great. I think it's really touching. Nice job !
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Dear Leela:
You made me smile and try to keep a tear inside of me, because I'm working right now (or I must be). Very nice work!!! Thanks for sharing!
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this is wicked cute, this is great, thanks for sharing. so funny that i knew you like right after this!
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Imho this is not embarrassing at all, it's wonderful and very profound! So much for the old chlichee teenagers are YOLO airheads. My favourite part is your comment on "wisdom".
I regret that I've never done such a letter to myself (now it's to late, unless I want to write to my possible midlife-crisis-future self?), but at least I've tried to keep a diary every now and then and kept!! them. Imho we definitely -do- change over the time, and yet I also still recognize me, parts of my character, even in those acient, clumsy scribblings I did now already over 20 years ago.
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o_o Well damn, I wish I had that depth when I was 16. This is very beautiful and your 16 year old self should be proud!
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I would probably fall in love with your 16 year old self!
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wow this is simply amazing.
and I was thinking about something similar to this today when I suddenly decided to visit my old dA account…what a coincidence…
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Wow, this is such a neat idea! It's like an unintended, illustrated time capsule C: Thank you for sharing, it's neat to see how artists have progressed with their art and their words and perspectives.
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This is.. wow.. I don't have words to say what I want to say. But I love this.
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Adorable. What an insightful teenager you were.
I found a journal of mine from second grade last weekend. In the middle of one entry about the book my mom read me the night before, I randomly asked, "I wonder if I can fly?" It's been 23 years...still not flying much.
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So brillant, I don't remember having such deep reflexions when I was 16.
Do you still have the feeling that she was not you ? Did you forget entirely how you feel when you write ? I can be emarrassed about my reaction five minutes ago like 5 years after, but anyway I think I can always find out why I reacte in this way ( when I remember all thé context, of course).
Lovely illustrations !
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This is amazing. Isn't it crazy how you can read things from your past self that seem wiser than anything you could come up with now. Profound thought as well, that we are different people from one moment to the next.
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This is so, so adorable. Loving the illustrations. I feel very identified with the whole thing, keeping a journal and asking myself similar questions. (Hopefully I won't be too embarassed in 20 years, when I re-read them!)
And on a VERY irrelevant note, we have incredibly similar handwriting!
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This was beautiful and inspiring and it reminds me of the letter I wrote to myself when I was 16, to be opened when I was 20. Not much of an age gap, but still enlightening. You were certainly deeper than I was at 16.
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Wait until you're 35, If i found something from when i was 16. Oh god, I really don't know what I'd want to tell that girl. I'd probably just cry b/c I can't save her from the worst that is coming or tell her to persevere because right now is wonderful.
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This is one of the best comics I've ever read. That's what literature is about: feeling the pain and joy of being alive. And it shows what a beautiful person you are. Thank you for sharing this with us.
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This is really impressive and insightful. I used to do a mini-time capsule every year. When I would pack up the Christmas decorations I would include a note to myself about 1) all the gifts we got as a family (its amazing how quickly you forget) and 2) what I was doing in my career at that moment. What clients I was working with, what things were in the hopper, what things I was hoping would happen at that moment. I wouldn't see that note until I opened the decorations the next year. 9 times out of ten we couldn't remember what gifts we got last year and most all of the hopeful artistic projects didn't happen and I was working on stuff that weren't even on my list a year ago. It taught me that hope is rarely in what we have in front of us right then, no matter how great it looks. Something else will take its place, and usually, its even better than what we were hoping for!
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Woah, that's a great idea about putting notes in Christmas decorations! I'd try it but I usually get bitter or biased when I try to sum up a whole year so maybe I need to do notes like that in shorter time spans.
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That's funny - I found a bunch of journals from my teenage years right before New Years. I had similar feelings - amusement, mild embarrassment but not those huge "d'ohhhh" moments I get when I do something stupid because those journals were not me anymore.
It would be fun to do this whole journal thing again so 30-year-old me has something to laugh about. But I'm afraid the most I can manage now are tumblr posts.
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Don't worry, I'm sure we'll all be sufficiently embarrassed by our tumblrs, and sooner than we think. <3
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Haha, good point! 
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