Title: [Insert a profoundly complicated but politely short Japanese word here, please and thank you.]

To young women, being the ‘old white male’ philosophers of their families everywhere.

Disclaimer: What is ‘time’ anyway?

Today was the day I finally opened the letter I had written to myself ten years ago.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that the act of writing to myself doesn’t sound insane, or melodramatic or ridiculous to me, don’t you dare! get me wrong on that. I don’t think of writing to myself like some pious, neo-religious, sacred, little ritual. It’s just that it always seems to me as if my brain is a maze I’ve been tasked with figuring out at the risk of being trapped in hell and writing is a piece of light shiny thread that’s been left there so the maze people can avoid a negligence suit in case I never figure out how to escape on my own. (read that sentence in one breath please) I know that sounds intense and dramatic but, what can be worse than never escaping your brain? What can possibly be worse than always having to contend with that perfect little bitch in the back of your head who thinks everything is as simple as thinking it. Just close your eyes, count to three (start from three) and imagine for a moment, never escaping and never being able to silence that little psycho who thinks that ‘what’s thought is done’. Hell, even singing seems that way, doesn’t it? That song in your head navigates your internal auditory system so smoothly and so easily, so prettily and you think “oh! what a beautiful sound I could make.” and try singing out loud and you’re almost slapped with the unmitigated awful croak that comes out of your throat. Now I’m sure it’s not that bad, after all people converse with each other even in sing song without getting a stroke, almost every day, but that fucking voice in your head, that fucking voice and her standards! She thinks that not only were you born with honey laced throat but that you’d been practicing all your life just so you could harmonize with your favorite song. I know I’m getting off track here, if even I had a track to begin with, and I know I just used the phrase ‘I know…’ a million times but I don’t care. You’re just gonna have to contend with me knowing things if this (this weird transaction of you reading a random stranger’s most intimate thoughts and the random stranger ‘figuring their self out in this voyeuristic process?’) is going to work.

Anyway, you’re probably wondering what profound shit I must have written to myself ten years ago. To that, I say please stop; because not only was it very un-profound it was a little insulting. It’s actually very insulting now that I think about it ten years later, that this luminescent brain, this force to be reckoned with, this person of un-figure-outable intensity and charm could have ever written something as relatable as this piece of shit I just found.

The thing is all this bravado is observed very closely by myself than it is by you, I don’t really know what luminescent means and I’m too lazy to google it, in fact I hope I just used it wrong. I obviously just made up the word ‘un-figure-outable’, and I would laugh if anyone came up to me and told me “You are quite charming, you know.” In fact, I would laugh so hard at that person I’d end up uncomfortable. But if I can’t strut chest first here, where can I? Where will I ever take up as much space as I want, not need, not require, just want? When will I ever sit like a cocky man sitting in a taxi looking like he just bought the driver the taxi and is being taken out for a thank you drive? I honestly can’t bear the thought that I might die, just die without ever spreading so wide I need my hands to collect my dissociated legs. I know I’m getting off track again, like I said I don’t know if I had a track to begin with so, please calm down and enjoy the view of my dissipated internals for your expert appraisal. (I don’t know if I mean to be insulting by that or not, you’re gonna have to figure that out for me, please and thank you.) On a side note, though, I genuinely think I would have loved to become (‘become?’) a writer; had it not been so tiring or had I been a bit less lazy but come on! The lazier the writer, the better, right!? (I don’t care please DO NOT think “that’s actually true.” to yourself and share a moment of intellectual connection with me, I absolutely hate that.)

If you haven’t figured it out just yet, I am someone who works a high-class corporate job and thinks daily, to herself “what the fuck am I doing?” I am also a soft spoken, innocent eyed woman, whose whole thing is trying to shrink a bit more each day, to become as least seen as she possibly can become. I am also a makeshift philosopher who thinks everyday wow! (Isn’t philosophy that after all? Ego, self-hatred and mania all rolled into neatly complied books, that podcast bros turn into mottos for life and intellectuals all over the world treat like intricate advanced mathematics. I think so.) I am also a young woman living with her parents hating that she doesn’t really have a life to call her own and can’t attempt to truly have one without offending the whole freaking clan. (aren’t families the weirdest concept ever as an adult, there are literally people who will get pissed clean off if you decide you no longer believe in God or believe in a different interpretation of him, what the actual heck, man?) I am also a believer, I am someone who actually, truly believes that there is a God, who cares and is involved in her tiny little life and is terrified of disappointing said God but keeps doing it every damn day any way. I am also an A-type over achiever who wants to get promoted and maybe some day rule the world. (am I the only one who thinks there is nothing more servant-ile than ruling people?) I am also a reader who thinks life is so devoid of meaning that you might as well just live it. But at the nexus of it all, I am also someone who is so full of love and is so sensitive that she would easily make anyone a tiny little room in her heart if they so much as smiled at her on the street (not applicable to lusty smiling gazes from men) and often ends up wanting to be alone because of how terrifyingly intensely she feels for/with/about people. I am not telling you this for any reason, other the hope that you’ll think, oh I get why she’s fucked up, so please, ENGAGE!

Anyway, back to the letter, I wrote the letter to my younger self as people do, one calm haunted and haunting after noon, the kind that likes to imprint on your mind even though you did nothing of note. I remember just sitting out on the terrace with my husband having a cup of warm flavored tea and talking about everything and nothing as has become our thing since we both retired and sent off our children in a million different directions and were left alone for once in decades, getting re-familiarized with this person we were in love with enough to marry thinking this little piece of paper will be my stronghold on this person forever but immediately let slip away in the quickness of life. I remember getting up to grab a journal I hadn’t touched in years after covering my dozed off husband with a quilt I knitted in the first few months of my retirement before I realized it was absolutely okay to be unproductive now that I had ‘produced enough’, and sitting down calmed by the white noise of my plants growing quietly, my husband’s light snoring and the cars cruising by because we were in that part of town. I opened the journal to the first empty page I found and wrote:

You did it! you finally grew into that heart of yours. I know it seems utterly impossible to you sitting at your desk at 25 kissing the asses of people you’d rather punch, I know it seems completely unachievable with you trying to control your heart so you don’t get too attached to and trusting of the guy you’re dating in that particular week, I know it seems impossible hating with a passion the systems that created the world where some beg and others reply “egziabher ystlgn” assigning ourselves some intercessory power, I know it seems so impossible to you who thinks how can anyone ever love/be attracted to me and still stop for at least 5 minutes and stare at the glorious beauty reflected that surprises you every single time, I know it seems impossible to you who keeps telling herself “I will never get married.” because you didn’t want to create another set of ‘parents’ for yourself or God forbid another you for yourself. I know it seems impossible when every time you kneel to pray or think of God at all you feel so disturbed at how loved and how awful you are, not knowing every time you make a cross over yourself it’s as profound as a little girl gently holding her huge father’s hands. I know it seems impossible to you thinking you’re so alone yet so perpetually yearning to be with yourself convinced you’ll never get yourself. I know, trust me if anyone knows I know. But you see the heart and the brain that weigh you down now will be your wings to fly with beyond your wrinkled body’s reach someday, the love in you that you felt could drown a room will become the cocoon your children will long for the world to resemble even a little bit when the going gets tough, your fear of marriage and of life will become the humility and respect with which you navigate your days in a couple, the thoughts of life’s meaninglessness will become your armor with which you get to circle yourself and laugh when you screw up, the set of parents you wished to never duplicate for yourself will become the very people that make you realize you’ve always been loved beyond understanding even in the quiet, stern looks that never came without first making sure you were okay. Those books you thought were making you even more paranoid will become the food for thought you get to ruminate over, with all the compiled information you will have when you get to that age you always thought would turn you into a non-curious, automated existence, but will rather make you a person who truly does not judge, someone who understands where those thoughts come from and does nothing to try and delay their arrival, someone who gets you as much as you always prayed the man you eventually hopefully fall in love with would. Not only will you be okay, not only will the vastness of you make sense honey, but so will the world’s.