A Letter To My Younger Self: Don't Worry

When I was younger, I used to schedule emails for my future self and then promptly decide to forget about them. Surprise. A letter to my older self. It was the only way I knew of somehow traversing time, reaching out through the tendrils of reality and touching someone you don’t know, someone you can’t ever really not know.

The idea of walking back in time, of sending a message back even if it doesn’t change anything is so much more.

It’s the pure contrariness of it all.

The absurdism of the idea that you can even get a glimpse of something you used to be. The complete wrongness of getting a chance to show yourself how you’ll change and how you’ll grow. It’s the fantasy of even imagining having the chance to change your past, and your future, by association.

This is a letter to my younger self that I’d probably send if I ever had the chance. Maybe it’s possible, maybe it’s not, maybe time is relative, maybe it doesn’t exist.

Maybe time isn’t linear and maybe the past is as unknown to us as the future. Maybe the past is a whole different realm, a completely unfamiliar territory.

Because I’ve changed and I know it. I’ve changed in so many ways, and over so many aspects, that I don’t even know if there is a stable sense of self.

I don’t know what I am if all I’m destined for is change and change and more change. It might be nice and positive to call it growth, but it doesn’t much feel like growth all the time, does it? Not for everyone. Because growth is meant to be good, but not everyone changes for the better.

So it is something more realistic than growth, something rough around the edges and something that can’t be trusted. Who am I if not what I used to be? What is my identity given based on? A body? A face? But those change too, don’t they? Is it a name? Rather abstract, though. Who am I and how am I different from you?

Because I am different. I know that I am different, so it’s almost like talking to another person, but one who knows you better than anyone at the same time.

It’s like talking to someone who won’t exactly understand what I’m saying but won’t need to either, so that’s kind of enough.

If I ever get a chance to actually send a letter to my younger self, even though I might not get a response, even though I might never know how its received, I’ll do it. I don’t think I’ll give any advice or tell myself to change something about the past. I don’t think I’d like that, the kind of sacrilege it would be.

I don’t think I’d be able to stomach the idea of accepting the past as something other than reverent and precious and unreachable.

Even though my past is not perfect—is there anything that is perfect and loved in this world, after all? I’m happy being loved, and I’m happy loving. There’s nothing more I want that perfection can achieve.

So, Myself. I won’t tell you to change anything. I wont tell you fix anything because it doesn’t need to be fixed by you. Not yet anyway.

You’ll fix it when you can, when you must. You’ll fix it when you’re ready or maybe you won’t need to fix it at all. Maybe it will fix itself. Maybe you’ll realise that it was never broken. Maybe you’ll find someone who fixes it for you. I won’t tell you to change yourself, because it’s not in your hands. It’s inevitable. You will change, for better or for worse.

You will change and it will be confusing and it will be frustrating, but it will also be okay. It will be okay because I am okay and I am you. So I will not give you any super secret advice or any life changing lesson.

Because that would mean wanting to change what’s happened to me, changing me, amd there’s enough changing going on already without us meddling.

I will not even give you a hint of what will happen in your future, because that wouldn’t be fair. All I will give you is a few words. Or maybe a lot of words. Because in the end, words are all we get and words are all the stay.

You’re obsessed with ideas. You’re obsessed with things that don’t happen and thinking about what would it be like if they could happen. You are obsessed with books (Anne Of Green Gables( and music and movies. You are obsessed with possibility and potential and poetry.

And time is a kind of poem, isn’t it? Its a poem that doesn’t even use words because it doesn’t need to. But I will use words because I need to, because its important to have a medium and because I’m not an eternal entity that has been personified in the most diverse of ways. (It has been, hasn’t it. Time is cruel, but Time also heals).

I am a human and I will use whatever means I have to do what I want to do. Even if what I want to do might never come to fruition, I’ll still do it. Because that’s what we do, don’t we?

And what I want to do right now, is talk to you. And tell you things you probably know already, because we’re the same, aren’t we? No matter how much I change and no matter how much you change, I’ll never stop being you.

I’ll talk to you about how you’re afraid. How that doesn’t really change, except, probably it does. I’m still afraid, and I still think too much, and create things like impossible-to-send letters in my head. You’re afraid and you think more than I do and make up even weirder stuff in your head. And that doesn’t really change, except, perhaps it gets easier to accept and love.

You remember too much and I do too, except I don’t think it’s that bad now. Forgetting would be worse, probably. You care too much and I’ve come to realise that it’s not a bad thing at all. Not like people make it out to be.

You think of the future, you worry over the past, you care about the present, you care about changing times, about homework, about global warming, about strangers and about family, about that one friend you’ve stopped talking to. You don’t ever stop it.

You make mistakes. I do too. But you also don’t make the mistake twice, so that’s a good thing, probably. You can’t make fast decisions. I can’t either. Still not. But I think that helps us make the right decision. Sometimes, atleast.

And you read too much and I read even more. So, that’s more of a good change. And see, not every change has to be bad.

But you don’t realise that yet. And sometimes, I don’t either. But that’s okay. We’re both growing.

We’ll get there eventually.