Dear you

(With friends in a cafe in Tarlac that I forgot the name.)

So I’ve been MIA and haven’t posted for a month already and I don’t know how to explain it. You know people just have this down time, a time where words just won’t come out, they call it writer’s block, I call it shutdown. For weeks topic come and go inside my head, what I should write and share but nothing comes out when I sat down to spread the thoughts out.

And then I remember that I wrote something for my old blog and went through my files and find this letter for my future self by my much younger self (and I regret how I didn’t put a time stamp on it so I’m really not sure when I wrote it).

So as a payback I will share it to everyone. I dedicate this letter not just for myself but also for the people who needs this word to get by and to remind them of the things they almost forget, themselves.

A message to my future self,

I hope you are a fine woman now, being great is even better but no pressure here, I hope you outgrown yourself and that you’ve become a better version of yourself. I hope all your insecurities are gone now but I doubt it because you are the person who has the lowest self-esteem EVER and that’s okay because that’s what made you who you are, you just need to cut yourself some slack okay?

You are great. Maybe not by the society’s standard but you are great in someone’s eye, you are loved, you are worth it, and you are everything. I don’t know what made you think less of yourself, I don’t know what exactly happened but you can make it through, you will make it through. You have to because I’m counting on you.

Remember those late night cries? You were such a crybaby crying and crying just because you’re such an emotional wreck but I’m thankful for those times because you became better, more stable, and braver. Being an adult doesn’t always mean that you have to be strong every time, that you have to be a stone, it’s not like that. Being a grown up means that you can still feel the pain, that you can still cry, but after those crying session you need to pick yourself up and conquer life. Whatever you do, wherever you are, all you need is to move forward.

You are the most boring person that I know, you’re close to being a miss-goody-two-shoes and I still don’t know what to make of it. Honestly, I hope you have a life now. I hope you grown acquainted with the crowd, with the people, with the normal things normal people do. But I know you, you’ll do something because you like it and not because you are pressured to do it so with that I salute you.

I hope you know better, do not belittle yourself. Decades of not trusting yourself, of not thinking you are good enough, of being someone’s shadow is enough. Conquer the world with confidence with the knowledge that you are great, no more self-shaming thoughts please.

Please be better than me, have a purpose. I’m so done trying to fit in, trying to find my worth so please be great for me. We don’t need fame or the recognition, we need to be us. You need to be better and I know that I should be better for you too but in case I’m too weak for that I would ask you to work extra hard to fill in my lacking.

Love,

Your younger self.

I don’t know about you guys but every time I read letters like this I feel like I’ve awakened from a slumber I intentionally tried to avoid. It feels great to be reminded of how an internal voice believes in me. I know a lot of people who are on a trying time and I feel them. I wish we could all ease the pain even just a little, but we need it to grow because life has never been easy to deal with so use that pain to create an abstract that you can use to hold on.

Why is it so easy for us to hold on to someone else when we couldn’t hold on to ourselves in the first place? We may never know the answer, we just have to respect each other’s way of coping.

If you can give your future self a message, what would it be?

P.s. Hi, Jam. Hahaha