A letter from November 20th, 2020

Dear FutureMe, I wish I could talk to past me. Send my 13 year old self a letter. I tend to get stuck in what the past could have been if I had not lost so many years to mental illness. I can't turn back time. I can't redo the teen years (do I actually even really want to?). It's been almost 10 years since I've left high school and I have learned so many things that I wish someone had told me back then. But I can't tell past me so maybe by the time I get this I can tell my future kids. You are beautiful - not that we need to put emphasis on appearance when there are so many other things that make us wonderful and interesting. But beautiful has so much more meaning than just what we look like. You have a kind heart and your desire to help people is so inspiring. You need to remember that you are important to and that you need to help yourself first. Taking care of yourself first is not selfish - they tell you in airplanes to put your oxygen mask on first before helping others. That is so you can continue helping others. Please don't compromise your well being for others. Life is hard and we all go through big and challenging things. Don't try to handle everything on your own. Ask for help when you need it. Help your friends ask for help when they need it. You are not a counselor and you cant take on the big things alone. Asking for help does not make you weak - I often think what would have happened if I asked for help sooner. If I hadn't tried so hard to hide my own suffering that was damaging my body. I often wonder, could I have reclaimed some of the years that I lost? Could I have lessened the shame that built and built and built. 8 years of binging and purging and starving myself. Looking back on pictures of my lean teenage body drowning in oversized clothes because no matter how much weight I lost I would never feel better. No matter how much I hated purging and getting puke in my hair I couldn't stop doing it. Stealing pills and getting strung out because feeling nothing sounded a lot better than feeling awful. Except it didn't work and was barely even a band aid to my problems and the next day I just always felt worse. Hello vicious cycle. Self harming not for attention like many claimed but because I hated myself so much that I felt like I deserved to be permanently scarred. Because I needed something to remind myself that I was ugly and damaged and broken. Feeling so depressed that you want to die, trying to die and failing. Puking a handful of pills in the toilet and telling your mother you have the stomach flu. She believes you. Wanting so desperately for someone to help you but being defensive at every turn. Walls up and spikes out. No one can know but god did you want someone to see through it and help you anyways. You were bitter and always said "there is no knight in shining whatever" coming to save you (despite that being what you hoped). Instead you insisted that "you have to save your **** self" but no one ever taught you how to swim through these challenges. How can you expect someone to swim if they've never been taught? You wanted to be perfect and not need help. Maybe you thought you didn't deserve it too. Maybe you were just ashamed of how broken you had become. You wanted to be stronger. But here is the thing, you are stronger. You made it. Yes it took years but wars are fought over years (okay except the Anglo Zanzibar War cause that one was just 45 minutes). In recent years you have discovered the phrase "Flecti Non Frangi" which in Latin translates "to be bent not broken". All those years you felt broken; unable to imagine a life beyond teenagehood. But you make it. Ten years out of high school and it turns out you loved university. You got two degrees and let life take your where it took you. You have travelled to 15 countries and have many more to go. You volunteered and gave back to your community. You ended up in a career that you never really expected but absolutely adore. You came out unapologetically and your parents have come around a lot farther than you ever imagine. You have amazing a supportive friends who have stood by you since elementary school. You've found some new ones along the way too. You beat bulimia. You beat self harm. You beat depression. Okay so yes, you are still anxious, and you have the occasional day where you hate your body but you are so much better equipped to handle those days. You have your supports. You have experience persevering. I know you absolutely hated hearing "It get's better" because it felt patronizing and silly. Who could possible know that for you? That's fair. They can't predict the future, but neither can you. You'll never know if it get's better if you don't give yourself the opportunity to see it. Also, you have a lot more control over how your future looks than you think. You have a lot more control than what your mental illness makes you think. People can help things to get better. People can help you get better. You were never broken. Things got a little bent along the way. Tree roots don't grow in strait lines, they bend and curve and yet they are strong. They hold the foundation together and allow the tree to grow. You've grown so much and you will continue to grow. Life will continue to throw hard times at you and there are even times that feel impossible to get through. But you have so much more strength than you realize. You have done so much good and you will continue to do good and find joy.