I had debated writing to your 35-year-old self but I am impatient for answers. I am restless, I want to know what happens. I am in pain and I want it to stop. I want to know what happens, I just want to know if I’ll be all right. Perhaps I’m not in the right headspace to ask, to demand the answers, but I know when you look back at me, you will pity me, you will hopefully want to soothe me, and repeat advice that my younger self has already imparted to its even younger self: that things will work out, just not in the way that you thought they would.
I want to know what happens after graduation. I want to know, at the base elements, where I end up living. Do I stay in New York or do I move elsewhere? And what prompts me to move there? Out of my unbridled free choice or by circumstance? Where in the city do I move? What food do I miss? Who do I miss? What sounds or smells do I miss? What am I so relieved to have escaped from? Also what job do I do? Is it in the well-meaning field that I would like to pursue or is it something else? Do you feel like you sold out? I know, I know. These are the superficial questions. These are the questions to mollify me about my financial circumstances, my social position, a reassurance that I’ll survive even if my heart is broken.
Is he here with me in the city? Does he move elsewhere? What is our relationship? Do we still talk? What happens? What happened in September? October? November? December? January? February? How about after that? I want to know all the details. I am ensconced in the present. I’m being facetious: I can only think about the present, I am desperate and firmly myopic in the current moment. I am so confused, I am hysterical though I maintain a calm though wounded facade. Please tell me things will be all right. When you are immersed in pain, you forget what life is like on the other side. Do I love him? Did I love him? That’s a question I want you to answer honestly. I have been frightened of knowing that answer; I have prodded myself about it but I refuse to interrogate myself fully because I’m afraid what I will find. I have built myself makeshift armor and if I know even a little about warfare, it’s that you never expose your own weaknesses. I am frightened that the answer is what tears me into little pieces, that this bleeds into 30-year-old you. I think it would break me because I want to save face: it’s a flimsy mask of strength, of self-preservation. To be hurt means I have lost to something or someone, and you know how much I don’t care to win but I fucking hate to lose. I am so sorry for our disposition, for our soft, nurturing nature that’s both a blessing and a curse.
What relationships are strongest? Who do I keep in touch with? Who becomes a nemesis? What relationships grow stronger? What relationships wane mutually or run their natural course? Who do I meet in the span of a year that gives me hope that things will be all right? That I can move past this? That this is a life that I wouldn’t trade anything for. Right now, I’m losing faith but you know that. You know that these are dark, messy days; you know that I just have to let the truth flow through me. It’s funny that I think back to 20-year-old me wanting to move to New York City and being vulnerable with a boy in a park. I moved to New York City four years later in that self-imposed timeline and I did find a boy who knows most of my vulnerabilities though we’ve never walked through a park together, though we sit on my bed and drink wine on either ends of my bed facing each other, the rift in our friendship rooted by betrayal and words once left unsaid sits between us. Maybe I’ll find a different boy. I know I’ll have to after reading so many Natasha Adamo blogs.
Do you still run? Do you still run to the West Village or another neighborhood? Do you run 10Ks? Do you run another half marathon? Is it in another city? Is that city hot or cold or rainy or dry or humid? Don’t say humid. Do you take up any other hobbies or denounce yourself from others? What about your spirituality? Do you find faith and grace in new things, in yourself, in others? Are you less hard on yourself? I suppose if I could tell my 25-year-old self anything, it’s that I did work on myself, I did improve though the journey was perhaps unconventional, unsuspected. I have meditated at length on the value that Cumtown brought to my life, however fucking mind-numbing and stupid and degenerative the podcast may have been. But it inadvertently made me more comfortable about being myself: I’m less ashamed about my upbringing, I am more comfortable with expressing what I don’t and do like and embrace the judgement that naturally comes with that. I am unapologetically myself and I find it amusing that this revelation I am more comfortable with my shortcomings, my flaws, being human. I embrace them like a degenerate. I also have much better perspective into how others behave, their motivations, their ugliness, because one thing Cumtown does really well through its thin veil of irony is express the insecurities that others have, the boundaries that they will walk over. And it doesn’t make me more forgiving of them… I suppose in Natasha Adamo’s definition of forgiveness (where you accept someone as they are), then yes, but I don’t give them a free pass. I suppose right now I’m figuring out where my boundaries are and how I negotiate them. I’m sure you have lessons for me on this part.
Who do you compare yourself to or you’ve gotten past that? Grown up on that? Deemed that uncool? Who are your role models? Who disappointed you? What grief do you hold these days? How do you plan to experience it? Do you feel that you’re good enough? Hm, I might have phrased that incorrectly or carelessly. Do you feel that you’re more comfortable with yourself? That you feel less anxious and stressed with the idea of being good enough? Are you coping healthily with that definition? Have you appropriately extricated your self-worth from your insatiable and unrealistic desire for perfection? How has therapy helped you? Are you still going to therapy now that you’re off school insurance? Did you find a new therapist?
How is your family? Your parents are getting older and so are your siblings. Everything is always in a flux of change, isn’t it? Like the neighborhood you call yours where you used to deliver thousands of community newspapers, the country you call yours, the magnificent world that you call your world. How are they? How are you navigating their changes? Is everything all right? Are you hanging in there? Have you lost faith or do you find that you’ve become stronger by tapping into hope, in faith, in resilience? What does resilience mean to you and how has it changed from my understanding of it right now?
Will things be all right? How are you holding up?
I want you to know that I have few words to console you, to motivate you given my position as someone in grief. I will say that you are always someone who leads best with your gut. You know yourself better than anyone, you know what is best for you better than anyone. And whatever choices you’ve had to make and continue to make are the right ones. I’m proud of you. I look up to you. You are wiser than me even if there are times when you don’t know the answers. You are extremely funny, smart, and ambitious. I know that’s surface level. But you are capable of tenderness and love, and I really believe that you deserve someone who recognizes you for the person you are. Someone who is an incredible writer, inquisitive reader, self-reflective, lives in the present, constantly works on herself and perseveres, a fighter, a crafty mastermind who can move mountains if she puts her mind to it. You are incredibly resilient. Please remember to be patient with yourself, to show yourself grace. I know that you can be incredibly hard on yourself. Remember that there are shades of grey that are worth considering. Remember that you don’t have it all figured out and you don’t have to; you’re still very young and you survived (and continue to survive and bloom and thrive) in Joan Didion’s wise words about what it takes to live a fulfilling life, in her New York. You are always one step closer to salvation, I know it. You have died and died again and lived to tell the tale. Tell me all the inconsequential things that I care about right now and indulge me. Remember to smile and laugh and cry, and smile again. Smile sincerely. Love hard, baby. Love yourself even harder, baby.
Happy early or belated birthday, my dear love.