love letter to myself
Dear Me,
I hope you're reading this in the future and life has changed. If you know yourself still, then you know how many times in your life you've wanted to love. The real kind, the kind that's raw and tender and bright and effervescent and crazy and intoxicating. Right now, you still don't know what that means. But you think it might ruin you, and you're so masochistic and lonely that you just don't care. You've written a million letters to a few people, even sent some of them away, but nobody has ever sent you one. This is it. This is the one that can love you better than anyone else. Because it's from you, and if anyone's worthy of you, it's you. You should know.
Oh me. I love how when you look in the mirror and trace the lines of your face with a finger, you feel like one of the ancients, like mythology. You think, maybe someone in 500 BC would have ravished me and my aquiline nose, my fine brown hair and dark eyes. I love how when you think of your own body, on a good day The Birth of Venus comes to mind, all delicacy and limbs and soft skin. Even when you feel like a bad poem, you look at yourself like art. No matter how much you don't want to. I love how smart you are and how hard you work. And when you're bone-weary, you still find ways to make art in your dreams, in how you romanticize naps because it's the only time in your day for the whirring universe in your head to come alive. I love how you hold the skin of your stomach in your hands like you're pregnant and laugh at it in the mirror because who fucking cares? I love how you're learning to connect the word sexy to yourself, even though it's really hard for you. I love how you take things one day at a time because you don't know any other way. You will stay up until the sun rises to read a book and then collapse into bed and think about it some more before you fall asleep, neck sore and back stiff. And how wonderful it is that you still collect your movie tickets, stamps, and objects from moments you never want to forget. I love that sometimes you use the Oxford comma, and sometimes you don't. I love that as you're writing this, you're reminded of that scene in When Harry Met Sally. I love how much you care even though you hate how much you care. It's okay to care. The way you still remember your best friend's landline number from childhood and how you'll probably never forget your parents chose a Supertramp song for their wedding. You're so beautiful and you're so alive. You're a million things all at once and a different thing every other minute. Stop believing otherwise, you divine fool. Oh me. Oh you. You. I love you because I deserve to love you. I love you. I love you.
