To Myself at 16
As I logged into this blog in what feel like forever, I looked through my posts. The terrible feeling, passionately written, and ultimately sad posts. I am reminded how far I have come. I wrote into those posts my darkest, most guarded thoughts; things I knew would bring worry to those around me. I eventually got the help I needed. I started eating again. I started to look at my body and not hate everything about it (maybe someday I’ll genuinely love it). I started to breathe and not feel like each breath was a chore or a fight against what the universe wanted for me.
Looking at the thoughts I didn’t have the safer places to say, I wish to go back. I want to sit myself down, hold her hand, and tell her “It never really gets better, but you do.” I want to warn her about the impending heartbreaks, the struggles, the pain, the acceptance, the joys, the friends, and the family she will come to find; the things that will build and grow her. The career that will billow out from the compassion and ferocity in her heart. The mentors and the the people she will mentor. The loves she will find in the most unexpected of places. The pure bliss of knowing of who she is, on the inside and eventually out. The moment of heartache when you realize you loved the idea of someone more than the person you were married to. The rage you will experience and channel to progress as a soldier and as a woman. The places you will see. I’d probably even tell her that we never actually quit smoking, no matter how hard mom tried to keep us from starting in the first place. But then, who would I become if I ruined the story for her. The girl plagued by these feelings and thoughts would grow, even flourish, from these milestones and in the five or so years since writing the last of those posts become me.
There will still be times where those feelings and thoughts will come back. That’s okay. It is an ebb and flow.
You will feel beaten, even broken, but you will go on. You will be okay. You will survive until you thrive.
