Still unsure what to do with this current idea, 'letters to me.' The idea was initially to create a documentary project, but while that is proving a little bit ambitious, I have simply been writing the letters. I included the first two letters, to my ten year old and thirteen year old selves in a previous blog post. Now I'm releasing fifteen and eighteen's letters. I've written the others and may compile a book of sorts with poems/ songs etc to release. Anyway:
letter to me aged 15
where do I start with this letter? we’re well in the thick of it by now. Been at it so long, playing these twisted games, that we’ve become numb. It’s been two years worth of dieting and arguments.
Last year you joined a new school, which provided you the perfect opportunity to reinvent yourself.
You’re no longer the ugly duckling who become a swan, the makeover girl, the one who was fat then thin. You’ve always been a swan as far as you’re concerned. Nobody needs to know.
Making friends turns out to be harder than you thought it would be, I know. I know it’s hard, and you begin eating more and more , slowly gaining weight.
You lose that weight after developing your first real crush.
No one would fancy you, love you, touch you, if you put on too much weight. Determined to lose the weight you gained you plummet down to your lowest ever weight.
I know all of this because I am you, and that was me, and even now it is hard to visit these places in retrospect. I’m sure he’s great, but you never knew him, and he was just a boy.
He did not warrant all that happened as a result of your fears.
You deserve more than this, but as I’ve said in the previous letters, I can’t change it, nor what’s coming.
The less you eat the less energy you have, you retreat inside yourself. There’s a shell of you left and your friends know it. You’re tired, robotic and frankly, boring. You used to be fun, but that was a long time ago. That was then, this is now, move forward.
It’s always forward, you never look back. Despite keeping friends from before the makeover you refuse to acknowledge a time before you looked this way. Pain and fear are such powerful opponents.
I wish you would eat. I wish you would laugh,
I wish you would cry.
Right now you’re the least human I’ve known you.
Your focus is on maintaining an image that does
not make you happy and had the potential to kill
you.
Yet you’re not scared. Diet coke is good, because
low calorie. Milk is bad because calories and fat are
part of the package deal. No oil. Over the summer
your treats per day are an apple, an orange, raisins,
chewing gum.
Just as at thirteen, you have eliminated
all the offending food and drink items, this time
you even cut drinks down
to water alone.
I will likely never have your resolve, your patience, determination, and commitment again.
I’ve not known anything like it.
You went to war for yourself, and did whatever you thought that took
I love you always, and will always protect you in whatever way I think that may be. Your survival instincts are one of my favourite of your traits. Your sensitivity and gentleness are up there too.
So, for now, keep clinging on to One Direction and moustache related items for happiness. It does get better. We make it, you just don’t get the best of both worlds I’m afraid.
As with anything, there is loss, and there is a compromise. I wish you would appreciate your family more, your friends more. Nothing lasts forever.
but for now, just hold tight
Thanks, for holding the fort for me by the way. You did your best, in painful circumstances. You felt alone and lost in your own home, at school, in public. There was no escape. I am grateful for the sacrifice you made.
to this day I’m unsure I would have wanted things different, a different unfolding. That was our story, you did it justice. and now I’m living differently in honour of you
The girl who lay down and felt her hipbones at night, stared at her naked body in mirrors, and never let herself be seen without a full face.
To me, you are perfect. To you, you are worth nothing.
I envy your slim figure, slimmer face and resolve with food
But I cherish my relationship with food now, my higher levels of energy and my personality
Yours has disappeared, it will return :)
Until then, write songs, save quotes, keep diaries
Love, future you
letter to me aged 18
Right now, I know you’re struggling. That’s fair to say at most stages of your life. But eighteen is a difficult age anyway.
We’re past the anorexia, diagnosed at sixteen, discharged from CAMHS at seventeen.
But in your A2 year you had a breakdown, related to body dysmorphia. And the dark crept back in.
This time it was face, not body. You don’t think you’re beautiful and no longer think you’re remotely pretty. When he sees you up close you want the floor to open up and swallow you whole
You’ve spent years hiding, so you know how to do it. And while you missed most of the year, you’ve somehow by the skin of your teeth passed your A levels.
Summers over. It’s September and your birthday is approaching.
But there’s a lot that’s happened, and it’s become impossible to feel happiness. You’re processing your life changing, and everything really, in a very ‘you' way. Shut down, retreat, don’t cry. Drink, a new coping mechanism you’ve added to the collection, is slowly becoming a favourite. As you get older you will add two more: ‘being bitter' and ‘pettiness’ but for now you simply wallow
Nights out are becoming a thing. And you enjoy the escapism, the attention, and a sense of forgetting things. Nothing you love more than a black hole where a memory should be
So buckle up bitch, this pep talk is going to hit you hard
You’re playing the victim. If in your own head at the very least. You’ve recently chosen this role, and will stay in it, for years. It will break your heart and drive you mad
My advice? Drink less, at home, and listen to music and write songs while you do it. Anything not serving you - remove from your life. Make things, write things, and love the people who love you back
Unrequited feelings are painful, but are not fatal
Stop acting like you’ve been shot
Pick yourself up
You passed your A levels!! Act like it, smile occasionally and stop tensing your shoulders like you're under attack
Depression is no joke, and I know it’s heavy. That is what you have to carry for me.
Thank you for doing so, in return I will give you everything you have ever wanted. As much of it as I can
Love always and forever, your biggest defender and critic, future you.
“the world is a cruel place for a mad girl with stars falling under her skin.”
Nicole Lyons
“and what of the house you build, in the ruins?”
“There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one”
Kazuo Ishiguro
“Scream.
so that one day, a hundred years from now, another sister will not have to dry her tears,
wondering where in history she lost her voice.”
Jasmin Kaur
“because who would believe/ the fantastic and terrible story of all of our survival/ those who were never meant/ to survive.”-
Joy Harjo, from Anchorage “How we became Human: New and Selected poems 1975-2002”
“The bad men come for me in a dream one night.
My mother has questions for them and their hands go restless.
I wake up wondering if they cried on their wedding days.
If they showed up drunk to their father’s funerals.
If they remembered who they were before
they were just another
bad yesterday.
Dear baby,
I must think about chasing light
more than I think about anything else
I used to think love a legend.
I don’t know if you remember the size of my doubt.
My heart was so quiet back then,
you must not have heard the broken parts.
It’s louder now but has forgotten all language but the buried ones.
You would have hated to see me like that.
Every day was a never-ending end.
My best dreams
were the ones that were loudest when they fell.
The grief was the only thing that wanted me back.
I know how much you would have
unraveled.
All I can think now
is
when the fire comes for this building of memory,
those are the days
i’d hand to it
first.”
-Y.Z the price of forgetting
“I hope the sun never stops shining for you. and if it does, then I hope the moon makes up for it.”- Y.Z
“For the ones who never made it back to us,
I’d like to take the time to say:
we invented ghosts to feel less lonely.
The years happened too fast
and we were sick with grief.
Momma says that our hearts aren’t breaking.
They’re just bursting with all the good and bad that’s happened to us.
I want to tell her about the time I thought the plane would crash for sure,
or the time I thought the world would end,
or how every person I’ve met is a country inside of me
and I’ve swallowed enough passports to be fluent
In the language of leaving,
but still, after all these years,
I choke on words even as small as goodbye.”
Y.Z someday we’ll make it
“But the act includes healing: one has to cleanse and bandage the wounds afterward. Hurt, suffer, heal, hurt, suffer, heal. It’s a trinity of violence all bound up in one person. It’s the loneliest act in the world. Camille is an inherently lonely human being”
Gillian Flynn
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