dear little me (in honor of the ten year challenge)

What do you say to a storm? It was engrained in her, a flash in her eyes that was wild, hungry, the symbol of a creature of the night. She was looming before she knew it, a hurricane stirring within her soul.

She’s not lonely, she is a ticking bomb, and she’s about to blow.

When everyone else is telling the specters of their past to not make dumb childish mistakes, the rites of passage to growing up, I’m telling her to lock up her razors and keep her fists closed. Run until you’re too weak to empty the pill bottle, or to make yourself vomit because the vile has become your only accomplishment. Write suicide notes if it means not doing the deed, keep them put away and pull them out to remind yourself how far you’ve come, it’s different now, it has to be different. Draw semi-colons on your wrist, the sharpie ink bleeding into you, emblazoned on to you to remind yourself that this is not the end, this is only a chapter. I’m telling her to remember to eat, to keep her door open so someone can notice when she’s on the verge of breaking, hang on to anyone so you don’t hang yourself. Don’t follow fitness goals Instagram pages or obsess over progress pictures, because you are more than what it is in the mirror, and most importantly, because you can’t keep going like this. You can’t keep up these highs and lows, and a dopamine rush isn’t a rush at all, just biological factors that trick you into believing that if you starve enough, if you trip through a workout enough, somehow it ends. It doesn’t.

When other people are telling their younger selves to do their homework, to be more in the Word, to use cleaner language and look at others the way God sees them, I’m begging her to forsake everything to remember who she is. I don’t care if she does her homework, as long as she makes it to the next day to explain why she didn’t do it to her teacher.

She is a storm, but storms are not just destructive—they are purifying.

I am proud of her. I am proud of this girl who gripped blankets because she was afraid if she let go, she would do something far worse. I am proud of this girl who got up every morning, even though her mind told her not to, even though a part of her told her it was better to end it because she was a waste of air—she wasn’t a waste of air, she’s not a waste of air, she never was a waste of air. She was the girl who stood against herself, the last defense, the lone soldier to stand against the charge of the brigade. And so she stood, and she stood well.

She was never weak, she was strong. So even if I tell little myself all of these things, I will tell her most of all that she is amazing. I will tell her not to change a thing, because in the end, she makes it out on the other side.

In the end, she makes it to me.