A letter from Apr 4th, 2022

Dear FutureMe, Here is an excerpt written in 2019, at twelve years old: Pledge, that I WILL obey for my own good: I will not gossip anymore. To anyone. Not Chloe, even if she pressures. Not Austyn, even if I feel I can vent anything to her. Not Addison, even if I feel she’s naïve and doesn’t understand. Not anyone, for all these reasons. Even if I make new friends who I think understand. Nobody understands. At all. It will just end up bad for me. They’ll think if they do me wrong, I’ll gossip about them as well. I will be nice to those who have wronged me. It will not turn out good for me. It will get back to them, and so they’ll know they’ve hit me hard. If I just ignore them, it’ll hit them harder than being foul about it Ever will. It will only do me harm in the big picture. End of excerpt. Created on the 19th of July, 2018. Summer after grade 6 Seven years ago. (Fun fact: if you stay close friends with someone for over seven years, chances are they’ll stay for life!) when I was twelve I said that I’d have to date someone for seven years before I’d let them marry me. Divorce scared me more than anything. I was scared of being left. I still am. Do you remember the summer after grade six? I described it as one of the most opening and informative summers of my life. What prompted this self-message? Did I go back and re-read it every once in a while? I honestly don’t even know if it really was made on July 19th, 2018, but that was the day it was last edited and the last piece of information I have. When I read this, it reminded me a bit about the classroom pledges we do at the start of the year. About loving god and our classmates and acting as if no one is watching and the golden rule. When I was thirteen I was vehemently against photographing every moment of my life, but now I miss it. I can’t remember what it was like to be twelve. I can’t remember what it was like to be thirteen. Do you? Even less, I would imagine. I wish I had more pictures, I wish I had more videos, I wish I had more evidence. Are you still the nostalgic fool I am? I also like reading this because my word choice has strayed so far. People pour their heart and soul into their art, into the way they write and convey what their trying to say. I am startlingly different (but so, so similar) to the person who I was four years ago. So, this is being sent three years in the future, which is terrifying. 2025 is closer than 2018? I remember when I was a kid and I didn’t fully have a grasp on the years. It felt like it would be the late 2010’s forever. I think I first conceptualized the year system when I was 6, when my piano teacher explained it was 12/12/12. A momentous occasion. Then it was 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019… 2020. 21 is my favourite number. It’s my birthday number, it’s the number of my childhood house. It’s my lucky number and I remember looking into the future and wondering when my birthday will be on the twenty first year and being shocked because it was when I was fifteen. And I planned the perfect birthday and it wasn’t all that revolutionary. 2021. That looks wrong to me, it seems foreign. It’s 2025 now, to when I’m sending this. I once watched a YouTube videos and it was beautifully edited, the 20 things she had learned in her twenties. I’m turning 19 this year. I already have, I think I’m going to send this letter to July, so it matches the date of the excerpt I wrote four years ago. I’m sixteen. I’ve been conceptualizer that concept of years, of the complex web of time, for a decade now. I remember when I was a decade old and Uncle Bazil asked if being ten felt different from being nine and I said, “Yes” with such clear certainty and then he asked, “Why?” And I was stuck. It did, it felt amazing and big, because I knew that time had passed, and I still don’t know about the one extra year? Maybe it was that everyone was asking me what it was like being double digits. Do you feel different than you were at sixteen? When you were my age? How? Can you answer why? The next year Aunt Corina asked and I said it didn’t feel any different going from ten to eleven. (It did. It did, it did, it did. But I couldn’t explain why and I learned that if you can’t explain than the best thing is to lie.) Is it though, best to lie? What do you think? I feel like the world has taught me so many contradicting things. Why isn’t there a line in the sand when a white lie turns into something worse? I’ve crossed that line so many times, I never seem to see it. It was nice talking darling, I hope the rest of the day is lovely. Enjoy the summer :)