A letter from February 23rd, 2021

Hey, future me. Today—or, on this day three years in the future and then some—you'll, or I'll, or we'll be turning twenty-two. That sounds intense. Maybe by the time you read this, you'll have gotten used to all this relentless clockwork in our heads. Or maybe you'll be just as scared. Am I scared? I'm not sure. I don't know why I'm writing this, really. I suppose it's to remind myself what it was like to be me. I know I'll forget soon enough. I wonder if I'll still be journaling. If I'll have met friends even more profound than the last. If I'll remain in contact with the vestiges of my life now. Or if they will simply be yet more pieces of the past. I wonder if I'll be happy. Perhaps that's too much to ask for—better, then. If my chest won't hurt too much. If I'll go a week without once wanting to cry. It sounds like a faraway dream. And I think the point of these letters is usually to look back on a you from so long ago and laugh at how absurd the things you once ached over were, but it has already been so many years since I started feeling this way. But I hope that you will be surprised, reading this. I hope that you will already have forgotten what we were. Maybe I'm contradicting myself. I want you to remember. But is it selfish of me to want you to no longer recognize yourself in this shattered reflection? To no longer use clichéd metaphors in every other sentence? Hehe. For some reason, writing this is making me start to tear up. At one point of my life, I didn't really think I'd have a future. And sure, I was terrified of what could be, but that isn't why. I thought that if some catastrophe didn't come down upon my head, I would take things into my own hands. I decided to stop caring about petty things like health and hygiene because I would be dead before I ever turned eighteen. And that's... something. Here I am, seventeen, and I want to see the ending of all the stories on my list. I want to weep and smile with my friends when I graduate. I want to feel the sun on my skin and the breeze in my hair and the scent of osmanthus flowers in late September. I want to be alive. So often I tell myself that I will be all right. I hope you are all right. Or getting there. We are all works in progress. We will all get there one day. And if you pull your curtains open and look out the window and breathe in the gentle morning, then I can believe for a little longer. I can hang on for a little longer. Because someday, I will be you. And we will both be okay. Love, me.