A letter from August 8th, 2020

2020, July 29th Hello there ! You know, I've been obsessed with Star Wars lately. Mom and I are actually watching the Clone Wars right now. I've rewatched it so many times in the past few months... I wonder when I'll move on. If I move on, that is. I mean, I haven't moved on with BTS, and it's been... 3 years? 2018 was when I got into them... Wow. Time doesn't really go by when you keep track of it with BTS album releases. Hah. Anyway, prequel memes and ARMY culture aside, this is a letter from 17 year old you. The same age as Ahsoka when she has to escape Order 66... Wait. Sorry. I said I'd stop. Well, on the topic of Ahsoka, she's my newest fictional crush. I had Ladybug/Marinette through my younger teenage years, and now I have her. She'll be with me for a while, I know it. Hmm, I wonder who you have at the moment of reading this. Maybe it's actually a real person this time. That does remind me. About that boy... your first... L word. I think I'm ready to let him go. I've been saying that for awhile actually. So maybe, instead... I've already let him go? What does that even mean? I'm still holding onto the silly string container he bought and then covered me in while we ran across the parking lot. I'm currently waiting for my amazon order of worm on a string. He would joke constantly about wanting one but we could never find any. I wanted to give him some as a funny surprise. It'll be here any day now, and I can't give it to him. I still think of him randomly. I don't let him stay in my head, because I feel as though that's inappropriate, but it's frustrating. Chasing him out multiple times a day. But, like I said. I've been thinking about him less. Less intrusive thoughts... That's a good thing right? To... let go? To move on? We didn't even have anything between us. Just friends. We haven't talked online since February. It's July now. Almost August. Almost his birthday. We haven't seen each other in person since before that either. When we last saw each other... I really said to him "I think about you all day, it's not good." Well, obviously I phrased it a bit more dramatically with timing and everything but. That was the point I guess. Not a good one. I told myself the day before seeing him I would tell him. I wrote a purple heart on my hand as a reminder too. But. I don't even know what I was going to tell him. The moment came and I could only tell him I think about him everyday. I didn't know what else to say. That I felt something toward him? Liked? Loved? I always think, "I know what love is, I was lucky to be raised by parents who made it obvious what it was." But why is it, that when he was right in front of me... I couldn't figure it out? It's a strong feeling (It WAS a strong feeling...? I don't know if what I feel is the same.) Comfortable, but exciting, and something like yearning. That's what love is, comfort. When I define it like that, then yes. What I feel, felt... was love. But, it's also being happy to make someone's day better in a multitude of smaller ways. I would. If, I could. I would have. But we didn't see each other in person very often. We didn't talk online everyday. All I know is that when I talked to him, I was happy. And I wanted that. Everyday. Even now, I miss it. That feeling. You know, he's just a second away. I still have his discord. And even though he's the only person I was interested in talking to, I still keep the app. I guess that must be a sign I haven't really let go. Whenever I hear the notification bell set for discord... I jump. It's never him, but I still wish. I miss... I miss him. It feels so weird typing that out. It feels so weird, typing any of this out. The feelings I had for him... I was so scared of letting there be evidence of my affection. Anywhere. I wouldn't write it. I wouldn't really think of it. And I would never dare speak it. Just thinking his name feels like a curse word, I can count on my hands how many times I've said it out loud. Too much intimacy in just a name, in just the possibility of something more. It scares me. ... That was a lot. I'm sure twenty three year old me is shaking their head. Oh how the heart yearns. Oh what drama. Oh oh what a helpless ******* teenage girl I once was. If I were braver. If I was someone else. I would type a message to him right now. But I'm not. I'm a coward. A child, not ready for love. Love, that isn't what I felt. It was something that could have been love. But because I was afraid, and because I still am, it won't be. It will die like this. This feeling of yearning. It will wither and die. And I will have learned nothing. No relationship experience, no heartbreak... This is what safety gets me. Nothing. No satisfaction, no closure. I will never know for sure how he felt. Never know for sure what he feels right at this moment as I type this. It's time to move on. Meet new people. Goodbye, nameless boy I have only unhealthily idolized in my head. We knew each other for three years, and now it's time to let go. It never would have worked out anyways. Race and political differences... hah. Not to mention. This virus... Would have been a ****** time to get into a relationship anyway. ...I'm gonna take a break from writing this. 2020 July 29th late night Au, out ! 2020 July 30th early evening / late afternoon Au, reporting in. I wrote a lot last night. Almost two full pages. That’s a good thing though. I want you to have lots to read. Lots to take in, and lots to think about. I can only wonder what your life is like as you read this. But you? You know what 2020 life was like. Sort of. If you haven’t forgotten. Time goes faster and faster the older I get. I blink and a whole month has gone by. It scares me. I wish I could do more. It’s hot. Not the hottest it’s been, but wow. I don’t remember ever experiencing heat like this. Global warming? Climate change? By 2025, it must be even more disgusting. Hmm. In case of an all out global apocalyptic crisis, I should print this out. Keep it around on hand. I mail all my future letters with the site FutureMe, but you never know what the future holds. No wifi, no electronics, most definitely a minimal possibility. By the time you read this. The world has fallen apart, hasn’t it? It’s funny, how as a society, we all know we’re coming to end, but we all continue on anyway. A bomb set to explode in the middle of town, and we walk by it everyday. We fortify our houses, move just outside of the city… but none of that will stop it. Comes down to money. Greed. We’re going to go extinct in pursuit of an idea we made up. Yay. I’m not really in the mood to talk about this. (In meta context, that’s ironic. Yes, I envisioned Palpatine saying “ironic”. I hope you did too.) I know what I’ll tell you. I’ll give you my average day to day schedule. Not a literal schedule, but a list of stuff that’s been typically included in my life as of lately. Alright. So first, I wake up. Around 10am-12pm. Just depends. This morning I woke up after 10am. Usually I lay around until 11am, which is when I can expect to find freshly made coffee. While I’m waiting for coffee, lying in bed, I browse twitter, or read books. This morning I browsed twitter and listened to music. Coffee was great today. Anyway, since then, I’ve read some of the book Crier’s War, and, well, listened to music… and browsed twitter… Oh. I haven’t really done anything today. I drank water, and had an ice cream. Um. Yea. Wow, today has been lazy lazy. Yikes. Anyway. I have chores to do everyday. I’ll probably mop today. Or… take out the garbage? Or clean the cat litter? Maybe all three. I do that sometimes. When I’m feeling particularly helpful, responsible and energetic. I’ve been wanting to help out more, so… anything works. Oh oh !! It’s 4:20 pm !! Wait for it. Wait for it. Still waiting. … Oh. There it goes. No longer 4:20. Anyway. You might think I’m ridiculous. I really do live the most boring of lives. Nothing ever goes on with me. No friends, no drama. Just me. At home. All day, everyday. I know quarantine has people miserable, but to be honest, it hasn’t really affected me much. I’ve read almost ten books this past month alone, which is the definitely fastest rate I’ve gone through them in over three years… But. If it wasn’t books keeping me busy, it’d just be anime, or BTS even, or music in general, and maybe Stardew Valley. It didn’t change much else. Except the boyyo situation I suppose. Or… school, actually. Hmm. I wonder what life would look like right now if the pandemic never happened. Well, back to the list of stuff. Other stuff I do is… Play the PS4 occasionally. I’m playing The Last of Us right now. Don’t know how far along I am with the story, but I love it regardless. I probably won’t play the sequel. Hmm. I finished Fallout: New Vegas this year. I hadn't played it since I was a kid. Couldn’t appreciate it fully then... it was a great experience this time around. You should replay it sometime. Sometimes I dance. More often than I game for sure, but not daily. It’s fun, and a nice way to express myself. It almost feels like a form of meditation. You should dance !! That’s definitely some advice 17 year old Au can give 23 year old Au. What else do I do… Ah ! Well, around 9pm to 11pm is the time Mocha starts bugging me. She wants me to go to bed so we can lay down and snuggle :’) It’s the cutest. When I go to bed at around 12am-3am, I usually read fanfiction. I wonder if that’s something twenty three year old me still does. If you do, I wonder what characters… I’m obsessed with The Mandalorian right now. I also occasionally look for any clone trooper from the clone wars (Bless Temuera Morrison), and Cal Kestis (Yes, the god**** ginger from Fallen Order, laugh it up), and some long ago anime crushes. There’s never any fanfiction involving my lady crushes, so I either write them myself or just imagine along to some songs. I tried watching some TV shows… but I always get bored before I finish them. Euphoria, ******* Eve, Narcos… all shows I respect, but have left off at some point. I’ll finish them eventually, but I’m just not feeling patient enough to sit through 50min episodes. Mom and I have been rewatching the Clone Wars. Or, I’ve been rewatching, Mom is watching it for the first time. It’s the highlight of the past couple of weeks. We’re watching it using a guide I created that would only have her watching vital episodes for maximum enjoyment. It’d be too much to make her watch every episode. Too much for most people really. Some episodes suck. I think the list only has fiftyish episodes on it. We finished The Wrong Jedi arc two days ago. One of the best arcs, easily. Anyway, now all we have left is The Conspiracy Chip arc, and then all of season seven (I know, the first two arcs of season seven are boring, but they’re important considering Rex and Ahsoka.). I’m gonna try and get dad to watch The Siege of Mandalore arc. Another break here. Early evening Au from July 30th 2020, out ! 2:33am Aug. 1st 2020 Hey Au. I’m tired. Really really tired. And I’m going to sleep. Like… right after I finish typing this. I just wanted to give the future me some more to read. Mum and I just finished watching The Bad Batch arc from season seven. Nice that it’s out of the way. Now we just have the even more boring arc, Ahsoka’s walkabout, before finally the finale ! Ai has been staying with us this last while. Her dog too. I’ve never wanted a dog before Delilah… I wonder if you have any pets. Maybe too much work. Maybe too much money. You know, I didn’t intend to keep dragging this letter out. But. I don’t know. I’m fine with it getting longer. I’ll stop writing when it feels right. Dad had friends over. Him, Ai, other people… They played hockey outside (Playstation) and drank. Sounds like quite the party. Nice to see em having fun. Dad invited me to drink with them, but I declined. I’ve always been hesitant to drink. Too much addiction going on in our community. Scares me, to think I could one day suffer from it as well. I know it’s me being paranoid, but I better stay safe. 17 year old Au doesn’t drink, but that doesn’t mean 23 year old Au doesn't have to. Have fun, just stay safe. Right now, having fun means watching episodes of The Clone Wars over and over.. but that will change. Go with it. I’m going to sleep now… Write you again. It’s 2:11pm Aug. 1st. I had a good sleep. Weird complicated dreams that I can’t remember anymore. I remember they were fun. Sigh, I wish I remembered… Folks are calling, lunch is here. Be right back. Huh. KFC for breakfast…? Not ideal, but appreciated. It is 2pm afterall. I l slept in pretty late. Woke up at 10am, but fell asleep. Woke up at 11am, but fell asleep. Finally got up for coffee after 1pm. Been reading Parable of the Talents since then. Oh I’m getting distracted by twitter and food. Monch monch. I’m going to take a shower. I hope you’re taking care of yourself. Showering and feeding yourself. Staying hydrated. I sort of do all that. Sometimes I worry about my weight, but at the same time, I’m content with it. I drink enough water, and I don’t go too long without a shower (two to three days). It all works out. I think it’s important to be in love with myself. To be comfortable with my body and mind, and wanting to make it easier for myself in the simplest ways. Happy to make myself happy, patient with my mistakes and efforts. I hope you’re in love with yourself. Au is pretty great. She’s weird, and funny. She likes to learn and understand people. She’s pretty. Nice hair, bright eyes, soft skin… Whenever I feel self-conscious of how I look, which thankfully isn’t too often, I tell myself, like a mantra, over and over “It’s a good body.” I want to say that daily. Have it ingrained into my head and self-conscious. I guess that’s more advice your past self can give you. Loving yourself is different to being in love with yourself. It’s a good body. Consider them both :) I’m going now. I got out of the shower. And I have to get dressed. It’s so hot, it’d be nice just to sit naked. Thank god my door has a lock. Regardless, I’m gonna put something on. I’ll write again ! Hey Au. It’s 5:30pm on August 3rd. My worm on a string arrived late evening on Aug 1st. Fun to play with. I’m going to forget about that boy, I tell myself, but I’m going to keep the worms I bought for him, I do. Sigh. Well, anyway. Yesterday I saw dad. Le. We saw Jurassic Park in theater. No new movies are playing because of covid. It was great. Very intense. It was a very different experience compared to watching it as a kid. He bought me two books. “So you want to talk about race” by Ijeoma Oluo, and “The Inconvenient Indian” by Thomas King. More current events type of stuff. I’ve been into it as of lately. Haven’t started either, but I am looking forward to reading them. Earlier today I finished reading the Ahsoka novel. It was pretty great. Pacing was weird, but great anyway. I also read some of Watership Down. I’m not really feeling it honestly. I would have enjoyed it as a kid, but I guess it’s not for me at my current age. We’ll see tho, I’m less than halfway through it. If it fails to interest me by the halfway point, I’ll drop it. Sorry Richard Adams. The wind is kind of scary. Apparently there’s a severe thunderstorm warning for cities and towns nearby, but not specifically ours. !! It made one of my Ahsoka drawings fly away !! >:( Well, it’s safe now. Anyway. I don’t think we’ll get hit with rain, but the cool breeze is very appreciated. I want to buy more books, but the indigo website is glitching out. I have a mastercard from yesterday, but I can’t use it with the site. Well, I could buy merch or something from amazon… But maybe I shouldn’t get used to spending money as soon as it’s given to me. I’ll wait for something I actually really really want, and then I’ll use it. Dad has changed a lot. He smiles more, laughs easier. He wouldn’t even really talk to us when we were kids. At least now we can have conversations. Not so much serious discussions, but small steps I suppose. Sometimes I wonder if we’ll one day stop having scheduled visits with him. Ev is already nineteen. I’ll be eighteen next year. Will it still make sense to see him? I don’t mean to suggest that we cut him out of our lives, but I think our visits will change. We’ll see him less, and he’ll buy us less stuff. We probably won’t watch a movie every time. They’ll be shorter visits. Of course, I’m not saying I want all that to happen. I’m just making predictions. I doubt all four of us will have the time to meet up once us kids grow up and get jobs. ...The older I get, the more I think about how lonely life is going to get. I already feel plenty lonely, but it must not compare to having children and being away from them all the time. Dad isn’t married, and he lives alone. Visiting his family occasionally must be the only social life he has. I wonder what life will be like for me when I get to that age. Grandma lives with us because she’s admitted to feeling lonely in her own house. She doesn’t get out much, and she’s been retired for less than a year. It’s hard to imagine her in her own apartment all by herself. There are elderly people in old people's homes too. My mom said that a lot of them missed their family because no one visited them. That’s a sad thing to think about. Especially with this virus around. It’s fatal to people their age. Upsetting. I think about the quote from Namjoon’s song, “Why is there no word for the opposite of loneliness? Could it be because people, until they die, have no moments of not being lonely?” I’m going now. Think about dad. Think about how lonely you are. Okay? August. 8th, 2020. 12:52pm Hey Au. Been a few days, hasn’t it? Sorry about that. Haven’t been keeping up with the oh so intriguing day to day life I have. Oh well. I’ve ordered more books. “We Should All Feminists”, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape”, and “Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee”. Do you remember reading any of these? I wonder what 23 year Au reads. Anyway, I also ordered “Becoming” by Michelle Obama. Today I’m going to order the first three books in the Percy Jackson series, “We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir”, “The Henna Artist”, and then a Star Wars book called “The Clone Wars: Stories of Light and Dark”. Lot’s of books huh? Yea… I may have a problem. I’m going to slow down, I swear !! I just think it's important, that when it comes to a topic like feminism, or race, or whatever "controversial" discussion, I should read a minimum of three books on the the subject. Not good to only read one book and decide I'm done with the idea. I'll read more and more in an attempt to educate myself. Mom and I finished watching The Clone Wars. Feels weird finishing it for the fifth time. Once before season seven aired, once after season seven aired, twice when rewatching it with my siblings, and then finally, last night, with mom. I wonder if dad will watch it with us again. I’m ready to move on to Rebels, which I couldn’t do before. That’s good. I’m thinking about the future right now. What do I want to do? Who do I want to be? I’m reading a book called “So you want to talk about race”, and in the book, the author tells us about how she started a blog as a way to vent her racial related frustrations. It took off, and people all over the world reached out to her about how relatable and needed her blog was. It’s why she wrote the book. I think that’s pretty cool. Native people are so divided. I wish I knew my own people better. I’m a city indian, right? So I’ll never have the “rez” experience. Maybe that’s for the best, but even if I am missing out on some sort of epic trial and turbulence tale, I am certainly privileged. I don’t have the worst of it. I probably never will. I was thinking about my native related privilege reading "The Inconvenient Indian" by Thomas King. You should reread it. I'm not finished it, but it's easily one of my favourite reads this year. These past few years, I’ve had to come to terms with this internalized superiority complex over my own siblings. When I was a kid, I read a book about some ladies who live in a meadow or something. Truthfully, I have no idea what that book was about, anyway. They were sisters. The oldest sister was our protagonist. We never took the younger one’s point of view, but she was described as whimsical, and needed a lot of guidance on the most simpler of daily tasks. Forgetful and clueless, but happy and good natured. I remember reading this very specific line. The older sister refers to the younger as “Cloudy minded.” That has always stuck with me. I saw Or in that word even as a kid in grade school. Funny. Ev is a little like that too I suppose, but especially Or. I worry about her the older I get. She really is clueless. I felt better than them growing up. And habits I’ve picked up from this still leak through today. I’m working on reining them in, to change and treat both of them better, but it’s difficult. I’m so upset, and feel guilty. I can only imagine how much pain I’ve caused them with my petty attitude. Worse, they probably don’t even realize it. I was raised to think I was smarter than them, more capable, and ultimately, better than them. They were raised to believe that too, even if they don’t realize it. It’s the way my word is final. I’m the voice of reason, right? They trust me to think for them, because they believe they can’t do it themselves. That’s terrible, isn’t it? I can’t undo our entire childhood, but I can put in the effort everyday to respect them. To let them feel needed. To raise their egos up to mine. To humble myself. I can try. It won’t get easy, but it’ll get easier. That’s a lot of heavy feelings right? It was brought on by the book. Well, they’ve been feelings I’ve been thinking about for a long while now, but today I really explicitly spelled it out for myself. For past you, and future me. We will change. I trust you with that. The book told me to consider my privileges and how they affect the way I perceive the world differently compared to people without those privileges. I have plenty more to think about, but those two are the most relevant in life right now. I forgot to drink my coffee… It’s getting cold :( You know, this virus. Sometimes it feels like it’s never going to go away. Sometimes it feels like we’ll be stuck in our homes forever. That every casual outing is a risk of losing the people closest to me. Sometimes it feels like it’ll always be like this. It’s a scary world for Oc to grow up in. A scary for myself too of course, but at least I had a taste of what life was like before that. I got to go to school, I got to go to parks, and the zoo, and movie theaters. Do me a favour, go to the movies with Oc, please. Please take care of her. She approached me the other day. “Can you teach me how to read? Minecraft has stuff I want to read.” It was the cutest. I could try, and I want to. To teach her how to read. I’ll see about it. Loving a baby, is a lot different from loving Ev and Or. Those two were always there. They feel like an extension of myself. Oc hasn’t been in my life forever, but I want to always be in hers. I’m crying, Au. This feeling is overwhelming. Love and anxiety and hope. It’s a lot. It’s good though. It’s good. This was supposed to be the day, the day I say goodbye. Not goodbye. You’ve already said goodbye to me, the past you. You did at the moment I left. Just as 2020 Au has said goodbye to 2019 Au. It would be more appropriate to say “Hello there !”, considering it’s you calling from the past. And whatdya know. I did do that. Funny. Well, 2025 Au. This is where the letter ends. Thank you for reading. For carrying on. For continuing. For being more. For being even greater of a power I am now. For having weight, more impact, more than I can estimate. I know not what you are, but I know what you were. Wink wink, that’s a clever subversion on that one Shakespeare quote. Ain’t I just nifty? This is where I sent this babey off. Well, I hope you learned something. If not, that’s okay. I know you enjoyed reading it all anyway. 8/8 2020 Au. See ya later, space cowboy. P.S. BTS has an english single out on August 21st !! Ain’t that exciting?? My advice is to watch a run episode and listen to… Paradise :) P.P.S. Oh god. BTS aren't cancelled by now are they? ****. A worrisome prospect, but an inevitable fate. Another one bites the dust...