Yo! Cw: childhood trauma skiiiiiiip this
Short version: Dear past me, I wish someone got you into checking out audiobooks from the library sooner 🤎
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Dear past me,
You stare at the sun. You think it’s a superpower. You have been told you cannot stare at the sun. This can't == shouldn't misunderstanding, it buddies up next to a need to find something you are good at. The need screamed into you like negative space. It’s fine.
It defines your biggest choices, the misunderstanding, not the need. Or so. You have been yelled at. A lot. You have been yelled at about things you are bad at. You have been yelled at about things you are bad at and yet need to do to feel normal. It’s fine.
And you have been yelled at aboutt things every one who yells at you thinks you are bad at, but you have just been underdeveloped in for so long, you actually just need a little more time. More time with the kids in your life who give you ways to cope. Time you’d have to take from kids who give you ways to escape. It’s fine.
You will be kept from those kids. For a long time. You will get yelled at for things you do. You will get yelled at for begging people not to yell at you. The TV will be filled with people yelling as well. It’s fine.
The TV will be yelling as things get inside people. The TV will be yelling as things come out of people. You will wake up to a little girl a 100 irl years older than you shouting “THEM!” over and over at the top of her lungs. You will crawl out of bed. You will go into the living room. You will find the audience of parents asleep. You will turn off the looping DVD. It’s fine.
You will not know what to do. You will know to go outside. You will feel like she’s screaming about you. She will amplify every scream to follow. And every scream to follow will amplify every other. It’s fine.
A whole section of your brain will be remodeled to sense systematically bio signs a human is about to yell at you. Screams are complicated. This system will have to be a 24-hour monitor if it is to work at all. Parts of you you never meet will be gutted. You will choose to purge them and meet something new. It’s fine.
3… 2… 1… You forget whatever they were. You meet the new thing. You use it to activate a null sequence. Grow still. Bloom stillness. Harvest void. Your fine.
By the time you realize you use this sequence far too much, you are homeless, it is your birthday, you are a teen, it is a national holiday, and you are mucking houses and tearing down drywall and tearing out carpet, queer, surrounded by strangers. You find you don’t know how to talk to anyone. You sit on overgrown bleachers in a field flooded with oil from your nations largest mainland oil spill. You find you having found a lot of uses for that new part of your brain. You find it having taken you over. It’s fine.
And it is very helpful.
You find those friends. The ones who give you ways to cope. Words. Audiobooks. Podcasts. Games. You will learn from them. Things like invisibility — things you get so good at — are not super powers. You learn. It’s fine.
“I love you, past me.” It’s something I’ve been saying for a few years now. Any time I see something and feel appreciative. I say that. Any time my life is noticeably imimperceptibly a tad bit easier, I say it. I say it when there is chocolate in a bag. I say it when there is a pair of clean socks. I say it when I surprise myself with a cup of tea I forgot I made. Or a meal in a slow cooker I forgot I started. And I’ll say it again. And I’ll say it tomorrow.
Nothing’s fine. But you did this anyway.
I love you, past me