A letter from Jul 20, 2024

Dear FutureMe, Two days ago, I filled in the paperwork to confirm that I will spend my next year exactly where I have spent the last 18 - at home, in North Devon. I will be starting university in the very college that has perhaps been among the biggest of my triggers since my diagnoses almost a decade ago. The decision to stay came from many different factors but at it's very core feels alike an acknowledgement that I am not a 'normal', neurotypical, 'happy-go-lucky' eighteen year old girl. It feels like admitting my mental health has finally got the better of me and perhaps that it always has in some capacity. As much as everyone else says this isn't the case, I know deep down that it is; at least to some degree, and I'm becoming okay with that. In many ways I am so much better than I have been: My room is tidy for the first time in maybe years, I respect myself to the degree that I've learnt how to do my hair and my makeup in a way that makes me feel pretty and reminds me I am a girl in the same way everyone else is - which is a weird thing to say as a cisgendered female but I never really thought I was doing it right. I'm surrounded by people that I love and people that I'm beginning to realise love me back - people who screamed with joy and kissed me upon finding out that I'm not moving away for at least another year. I've started wearing clothes that fit my body and that have brought my attention to the fact that I am attractive not only on the inside (..?) but equally on the outside - though this of course has come with it's own challenges. One of the shamefully high-listed pro's on the "stay in North Devon" list was knowing that moving to Chester would undoubtedly result in the return of my awful (yet awfully missed) relationship with my ex boyfriend - In this way I am so much better than I have been. I still love him and there is a huge part of my brain that lives in the fantasy that being back with him is the solution to all of my problems; the tiny part of my brain that unfortunately holds it's roots steady in reality knows that this is not true - this is the part who vouched to stay at home, where I belong, since the very start. Staying in North Devon symbolises a commitment to myself to take the 'safe' options - which shouldn't be regarded as weak or sad, until I am safe within myself - enough so that my internal equilibrium can facilitate the chaos that ensues when you pursue the 'do it for the plot' mentality that every other girl my age seems to have. In many ways, I am so much better than I have been - a day in the life currently consists of reading self-help and self-improvement books, cleaning up after myself, taking my laundry down, brushing my teeth, getting changed everyday, going out willingly. Yet, in so many ways I am a shell of the girl I used to be. My life is better in quality, theoretically, but any immunity to my mental health problems I seem to gain feels like oxygen to a flame. My brain is who I am, in a biological sense, yet the older I get the further apart I feel from it. It's me - the flesh; the face, the hair, the skin, the eyes, the insatiable urge to be loved.. versus the parasite that sits in front of the control panel that many people affectionately name as their 'brain'. I hope life makes a little more sense to you than it does me, right now. Love you. -20.07.24