a letter to my younger self.

As I get deeper into my late twenties, I’ve been doing a lot of reflection. Reflecting on myself, on the things I want, on who I’m becoming. Reflection on where I’ve been, on the people I used to be, on the past mistakes I’ve made. I think aging is such a delicate thing because you’re constantly peeling back layers of grief that interweave and overlap across your lifespan. You are constantly in the process of losing things and people, and the only thing you can do at any given time is watch your life trickle past you like an hourglass.

And even as you grieve these very real, physical things, you’re also grieving yourself. Your dreams. Your reflection. Your art.

Nothing is permanent, which means every part of you is just a season.

I think what I find most compelling about my age now is that I’m just starting to feel the effects of aging. Obviously, I’m not that old. I’m turning twenty-eight in a few months, so I’m just old enough to remember things that make teenagers go, “I don’t know what that is,” but still young enough to convince myself that I don’t have to save for retirement. It’s difficult because depending on the day, I oscillate between both. Some days I feel older than I’ve ever been, and other times I see my life stretching out before me and I wonder if I’ll ever get to the end. I have a huge collection of memories and photographs and writings from my life thus far, and I’ve already seen a hundred different versions of myself. But that number is going to multiply over the rest of my life, and that both fascinates and terrifies me.

“Eras” have become a bit of a colloquialism, a part of internet culture that seemed to rise out of fandoms and music artists. What better way to historically map an artists’ life than by the color of their hair or the person they were partnered to or the work they were creating? Is that not how the world remembers? We cut up time based on these different seasons and label them to help us better understand.

Which is to say, I’m curious about my own eras. How would people remember different versions of me? How can I map myself?

I’ve been revisiting a lot of my old selves, and I’m grateful to have grown up at an age where I have so many avenues of self-expression. I grew up documenting my teenage years on the internet, and my early twenties are plastered all over social media. I have blog posts and captions and vlogs and everything in between to capture who I am at any given time. And in turn, this post is just another piece of history being written. One day I will look back on it and see who I was at this moment, let out a quiet chuckle at myself, and then move on with my glorious and as-of-yet-undiscovered life.

If you think too hard about it all, it will give you a bit of an Inception headache.

I can vividly remember certain times of my life based on the Instagram filters I used to edit my photos or the memes that I sent to my friends or the length of my hair. At the time these things feel timeless, that yes, surely for decades to come we’ll still be telling the same jokes and wearing the same jeans and watching the same three movies. When you’re young it’s difficult to fully comprehend time and its effects, so it’s hard to imagine living at a time other than right now. You are fighting in a war against your inevitable mortality and the strong conviction that you’ll never die.

Besides, eras don’t feel like an Era until you’re looking back on it fondly after years of distance and a little bit of self-loathing. I’m only just coming to appreciate what it was like to be in high school after ten years away from it.

When I was growing up, I was constantly thinking about how the people I looked up to, my older friends and family members and internet role models, managed the transition from young adult to actual adult. I never understood how one moment you weren’t allowed into the doctor’s office without your mom and the next you were expected to call the car insurance people yourself. How were you supposed to navigate the real world on your own? How did you gain experience and confidence without a guidebook? How the hell do taxes work? When I was sixteen, I felt like someone pushed me off a cliff and I had no parachute. I watched these other people enter college and move out and create their own lives and I felt like I had missed some vital course on the subject of adulthood. It haunted me. For years.

The truth of that fear is that I could never understand how someone aged into their truest self.

As a teenager I had multiple people praise me for my self-awareness. I constantly received compliments about how I was “so mature” and how “you know what you want!” and that I wouldn’t have to waste so much time in my twenties figuring out who I am because I already knew. Not to go all “mirrorball” on it, but as a former gifted child, I can see now that those compliments only made it more difficult for me to understand myself. I spent years thinking I didn’t need to change or that I knew how the world worked, when in truth, I actually was more lost than I’d ever been. Because I was young.

It’s not bad to be young and try on a million different dreams. I say I was lost, and I think I was, but the beauty of being lost is finding your way back. As I wandered off the path to follow each new dream, I collected bits and pieces of myself along the way. All these different versions of myself would take me on these fun adventures, and then at the end of it all I’d sit back and realize…oh, actually that’s not what I want to do forever…but it was nice while it lasted!

Each era of my life over the past dozen years has featured a different dream. The era where I thought I would be a famous singer/songwriter. The era where I thought cutting off 16 inches of hair would fix me. The era where I did NaNoWriMo. Vlogger era. Booktube era. Poetry book era. Broadway musical era. Fitness era. Bible study era. Flickr era. The list goes on. I chased after these things because I saw them reflected in other peoples’ lives and I thought they were having fun. I met so many of these people along the way that encouraged me and inspired me, and if not for these little detours, I don’t think I’d be where I am today. I had so much fun, and for a long time that was enough.

And I do believe that each of these different versions of myself are still within me. I still chase after a lot of these dreams on a regular basis, but now they don’t hold as much power over my life. They’re just things that fill my time, things that bring me joy. I no longer feel compelled to upend my life because of these dreams. I no longer base my identity on fulfilling these dreams.

But by having all these different dreams and versions of myself, I realized that I couldn’t discern who I actually was. I wanted to do everything because I didn’t know where my heart actually settled. I kept ending up back where I started, lost and confused and unsure how to make the jump from young adult to real adult.

Spoiler alert: I still don’t know who I am.

There are some days I feel like I’m crafting a new version of myself who actually knows who she is, and I feel real and authentic and I’m convinced I’ve finally conquered this whole Self thing. Somedays I feel like a real adult, one who likes to cook and works a 9-5 job and has all the right insurance. But most days I’m still just exploring. I’m still trying on different dreams and envying the lives of others and trying to find a life for myself.

But I think the difference between who I was at sixteen and who I am now is that at sixteen, I was convinced I’d found the answer. I thought that I had everything figured out and that all I needed to do was be free from the confines of being underage in order to live a perfect, happy life. I was more worried about making phone calls and taking care of myself than I was about my identity.

Now, at twenty-seven, I am convinced that the answer does not exist. That perfect, idealized version of myself that I wanted when I was a teenager is impossible. She’s only ever been a mirage anyway. Maybe one day when I’m older, I’ll be a few steps closer to achieving that life — the one where I’m sitting in a beautiful house with my beautiful clothes taking beautiful photos and singing beautiful music — but I think what I’m realizing is that I already have that life. Or at least, some version of it. To younger me, I am exactly what she wanted to be. I’m living on my own, uninhibited by my elders, I take photos and read books and journal and cook good food and exercise regularly and make enough money to travel every once in a while. And that’s a really magical thing.

We are ever-changing, forever destined to wander through the universe looking for answers. We will always be striving for the next thing, the new dream, forever unsatisfied with a mediocre life. But if you step back and look at the web you’re weaving, somewhere along the way you may just find that you’re already living your dreams. You’ve already done things that a younger you would be proud of. You will never achieve the full life you’ve always dreamed of, but you’ll find something better. Something more real. And maybe it’s better just because you had the opportunity to explore.

Looking back on all the different versions of myself, I’m not ashamed. I don’t hate who I was because I can remember just how thrilling it was to be each of those people. I’m sad too, grieving the fact that I can never go back to them. I can’t relive these eras. And in many ways, I don’t think I’d want to. It wouldn’t have the same magic if I tried to restart my Booktube channel or write another mixed-media poetry book. Time is fixed because to revisit it would ruin the masterpiece. We have to accept it, flaws and all, in order to live a full and happy life. We have to respect where we were in order to be where we are. And maybe that means living in hindsight, forever cursed to long for the past, but I find that the more I sit in the past, the more I am encouraged to appreciate the future.

a letter to sixteen-year-old me,

right now everything feels hopeless. you are trapped in a time loop, reliving the same day over and over again. there are a few hundred days of high school left, and you don’t think you’re going to make it through them all.

it sucks. period.

and i know your brain can’t comprehend how you’re ever going to get out of there. college doesn’t feel real, and anything after that simply will not happen because…well, it just can’t. so you read your books and scribble in your notebooks and scroll until your eyes are barely open and you think that if you zone out just enough, maybe you’ll be able to teleport yourself to a magical world where the everyday brings you unfathomable joy. you can imagine a place in the far off future where you’re free to make your own decisions, and you think that will make everything easy.

you want to talk to me because you think i have all the answers and you think that i’ll save you. but i can’t. i wouldn’t, even if i could.

because the truth is, even if i did give you the answers, you wouldn’t do anything with them. i could tell you that you should major in business in college instead of video, but you’ll ignore me just like you did mom. i could tell you that you should take film photography more seriously in college, but you’d ignore me just like you did the photo profs. i could tell you countless stories, recount all the mistakes you’re going to make, encourage you to be more present even when everything is hard, but in the end it wouldn’t do anything because you think you know best. and you’re so set on this imaginary life you’ve crafted for yourself that your brain isn’t developed enough to understand just how impossible that life is.

and it is impossible. but not because you cannot do the things you want, but because you don’t actually know what you want.

your dreams are a burden, not because they are destined to fail, but because they do not fit you. they are too small, too limited. since you do not know yourself or where the world is going, you don’t know what to ask for. or, better yet, you know what to ask for but you aren’t prepared for how your asks will be answered. you see a single path through the world, but you don’t understand that every step you take is leading you somewhere you never expected to go. somewhere better. somewhere more challenging. somewhere that is closer to what you really deserve and further from everything you always thought you wanted.

i am the person you always feared you’d be. i am your worst nightmare. i was broken by the world, wings clipped, dreams shattered. i made mistakes and lost a lot and suffered. over and over and over again. i am you. even now.

but what you can’t understand is that by becoming the person you never wanted to be, you will find freedom. there is freedom in learning to love the things that scare you, that you don’t understand, that haunt you. by staying the same you are limiting yourself. you are so afraid to step out into the big bad world that you can’t imagine all the good things that lurk in the shadows. what if the thing that will bring you the most joy is the monster lurking under your bed? what if your dreams are hiding just beyond that huge mountain? what if your person is waiting for you to walk through the desert and meet them on the other side?

i don’t assume you know nothing because you’re young. i know you know nothing because you’re afraid.

don’t fear the person you’re going to become. embrace them. allow them the freedom to change you. give you the permission to change yourself.

stop waiting for that imaginary future to save you, and start living for the version of you that wishes they could be where you are.