Have I Forgotten How To Smile?
Ten years ago, I started writing letters to my future self. I was inspired by a song from the soundtrack of my favorite game, Silent Hill 3 (though its lyrics are dreadful – not artistically, but tonally). It wound up being an interesting and cathartic experience that subconsciously pushed me toward the images of my design. I look back on them once every few years and am able to close a gulf in time – to feel and experience a person from another time. I wrote them randomly throughout my journal – not often and usually with little fanfare. Here’s two of them (lightly redacted to hide my secret shit):
June 28th, 2011 3:59 p.m.
Are you happy? Where are you now? What have you done and what have you experienced? Did you ever finish The Odyssey? Is Lake On Fire everything that you had hoped it would be? Is it everything that I hoped it would be?
I hope you’re still with J* … she is such a wonderful and delicate girl. I don’t know how she’d take heartbreak. I’m scared for her sometimes. I’m scared of you.
I guess by now you’ve already taken your healthy break from each other – probably not more than a month after I wrote this letter. How did she take it? Were we better together afterward?
I hope that you can tell me that you’ve done something with your life. I have so many dreams and aspirations, and I hope we found the ambition to fulfill them. Build a life for us there in the future. You can’t wait for everything to find you – you have to chase after it – to tame it and call it yours. I hope you learned that by now.
I am trying to look forward but I can’t see past these trees or this candle. I’m on the deck of the old house in North Brunswick. It’s a bright summer day and the air is so clean. I can feel the measure of the world around me. I say me because you are not me. You are someone else. But I am you. You lived inside of me once and shared in my every pain and happiness. But I don’t know what you’ve done or what you’ve experienced. I wish that I could meet you. I want to see you and talk to you. With this letter, I have closed the gulf between now and then and we can meet, for a short while, on the same plane. Write to me. I want to know you.
Some years ago, your past self hoped for your happiness.
December 12th, 2020 11:11 a.m.
(beginning of a new journal as the previous one was filled)
I can’t think of a more fitting way to start a new book. Do you remember me well? I’m nervous, unhappy with myself, desperate for attention on my article, and on the cusp of a (sexual) rebirth. Where are all the things that you wanted five years ago? I imagine that most people limit their dialogue with their future selves to questions like these because communicating with a version of yourself that is (literally) possibility incarnate is so unfathomable. But I know that you’ll actually read this someday, and I do mean you, not me. I’m just a piece of you, and every word that I write down leaves more of me in the past. I am holding onto such thirst and ambition right now that I am trying to use to further those fanciful dreams of a life that I’ve always wanted.
Melancholy won’t do right now. I have a strong suspicion that you’re satisfied with yourself right about now. I don’t know how many people you’ve had to hurt and neglect to get to that place, and you might not want to think about it, but I’d like you to take a second to do that right now. Stop reading and honestly think.
Were there a lot of them? Is she okay? A lot can change in five years. A lot can change in five days. Write back to me – A Letter To Your Past Self. I’ll leave an energy signal here – an open channel. Throw me a line.
I put a little “x” on the bottom of the 12/12/2020 entry where I left the energy signal.
I like the idea of writing a letter to my past self, though I can’t see the cathartic value in it. Who would it be for? That person is gone. It’s like writing a letter to the dead – or worse even, because at least the dead sometimes linger. You from yesterday is gone – replaced by you from today.
But, I think I’ll try it anyway. It can’t hurt.
I thought other people might find this interesting. If you keep a journal then you should definitely try this at least once. If you don’t keep a journal then you should think about getting one. Writing down your most intimate and private thoughts and feelings is often an effective (and prescribed) method of therapy.
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