I Wrote A Letter to My Past Self
It is always going to be alright. The trouble is ~ this fact rarely ever occurs to you when the time comes to send yourself a reminder.
My memories of you are so frail that I had to close my eyes to remember all of you. And this is what I remember. Sauntering along abandoned alleys with headphones in your ears. Soldiering to the library on listless, almost ablaze afternoons. Hovering on the highest railing of the terrace at parties. Looking up from a book and observe speeding cars. It was always easy for you to be comfortable with silence.
If everything we call life was limited to a single frame ~ I always found you loitering around its edges. Like you were stuck at the nice neighbour’s house party. Too bored to stay; too polite to leave.
But mostly, I remember that expression on your face. That peculiar look on the face of people when they’re dialing the customer care. That look of dignified confusion, yet gracious acceptance of fate; and maybe a little hope that something would change. Always, that constant look on your face.
I will divulge today what I used to think about you: that you lived your life wrong. You were too somber for a teenager, too dignified for a Junior Associate, too kind for a little sister, and too astute for a crazy ex-girlfriend.
We’re not friends, and believe me, that hurts. But it won’t stop me from saying the truth about us.
You believed that the real conflicts of life are never the ones we have with those who we love; they’re the ones born out of our own lack of acceptance. How can you reject what the Universe throws at you? There’s no method, no strategy, no gesture to indicate your refusal.
Instead, you kept placing blind bets on some sweet girl, kayoed to her knees by the indifference and duplicity of people, but still getting back on her feet and loving again.
I loathed that you didn’t envision me as an impermeable ice-queen. I’d imagine holding your pulsing heart in my hands, willing it to harden into sleet. Then, I’d open my eyes and find you sprawled on the garden, dissecting blades of grass. All by yourself. Smiling.
Only recently I discovered an alternate reality. That I could have put more faith in your vision of me, and not insisted you love me the way I needed to be loved. For I often confused love with asylum.
Before I lose my nerve, here’s another truth. Everything out there about love, integrity, forgiveness, benevolence ~ everything that’s been upheld about all that’s good and pure in this rotten World ~ is absolutely bloody true.
You were right all along, excruciatingly so.
*I wrote this piece as a writing experiment given by the Writing Critique Group. The aim was to indulge in an act of courage that bares your true self.
