to all my past selves

A letter to all my past selves,

i.

to the one who first figured out what it would be like to have the air chased from her lungs and sink to the kitchen floor without being able to figure out why, hands shaking and breath not coming and her mind getting stuck in this endless loop of no, no, this is wrong this is not right this feeling should not be happening: there is a name for that, and one day you will find it, and the knowledge that it’s your own brain you have to wage war against might seem a little unfair at the time, but we manage.  we do not get rid of it (there is still the shaking hands, still the lungs that don’t work, still the feeling of compression and expansion all at once, like sandpaper stretched over skin) but we manage.  i promise we learn to manage.

ii.

to the one who stood under a streetlight in a shadow soaked alley with her best friend and promised him, i won’t freak out, i swear, just tell me and then hear him tell you that he started doing cocaine but he didn’t want you to worry: don’t make that promise.  don’t stand there with the spilled soda drying on brand new converse, trying to keep your smile in place even though he has knocked it sideways and it is now hanging on by the hinges.  don’t let him walk away without being the one person to tell him to stop, please, stop before you hurt yourself. (you do stay silent, because between the two of you, you’re the one who always keeps their promises.)

iii.

to the one who went to that good bye party for the friend you aren’t really friends with anymore but still care about, where at the end of it the two of you stood in the middle of that street with its steaming rain puddles and the stoplight turning from red to green and back again, one of you on each side of the yellow line and neither wanting to be the first to walk away: this is not goodbye.  this is moving forward.

iv.

to the one who watched a pair of strangers drive away without their daughter, leave her behind in a grocery store parking lot and watch her chase them through the carts and the cars, who listened to her pink sneakers smack on the sidewalk and had her choke back tears while trying to explain the situation to your own mother: they remember.  they remember, and they laugh and she climbs into the car and you do not understand how it happened, because even then you knew that this world is mean and full of teeth just waiting to bite. 

v.

to the one who has flour lining the cracks of her palms and under her nails and dusting her clothes, who doesn’t realize that her mother is only eating the tomato soup because you made it (she really, really hates it), who walks around a house and says good bye to each and every statue by petting it on the head before she says good bye to her grandparents, who was painstakingly taught to throw a ball even though it probably wasn’t worth the effort and got to spend summer afternoons in a garden turned jungle, one that only got smaller as you got taller: remember to say thank you, because  i always forgot.

vi.

to the one who sinks to her knees on the pew in time with everyone else but doesn’t really believe it, who lets prayers slip off her tongue in time with all the other closet sinners who want to wash away guilt that doesn’t belong to them, who wants to cut herself open at the belly and pull herself apart from the inside out in order to make herself fit because she just. doesn’t. get it: you will.  there is still room in this place for you.

vii.

to the one whose world seems to have narrowed to a land far, far away, one with magic and monsters and castles and best friends who will follow you to battle and a boy with a lightning bolt scar, who sometimes secretly wishes she could go back to childhood days where she could save the princess from raiders and fight off pirates with her wooden sword: there are still plenty of things to fight for.  this world still has room for heroes.  go be one.

viii.

to the one who is certain that the faces in her camera roll will be with her forever, who thinks that she hates coffee and loves cats and never wants a boyfriend and swears she will not go to prom, the one that can quote Charles Bukowski poems and thinks she will never have fun at a football game, who sits in class and thinks about moving up the clock, about tomorrow’s and weekends and better times to come: you are wrong. hold onto this, for the both of us.