A letter to my younger self: concerning a fickleness within you

Dearest Savannah,

I'm not as wise, not as sure, as I pretend to be for you.

When I write these letters, I speak of our future as if I can see how things pan out, but I've got to confess that I have no idea what the future looks like. Tomorrow is a day I can't remotely begin to paint for you. I can't even tell you what the next hour will entail.

I'm just as blind and aimless and scared as you are. I'm a frantic, panicky mess and I have the same fickle heart in my chest as you - though perhaps mine is more worn out than yours is now.

I got a job since my last letter to you. (In fact, I was officially hired a week after that last letter was published.) I love this job. I love it so much that I'm scared deep within my bones that they'll let me go after the holidays are over.

It's a great job. In fact, you'll love it, but I won't spoil the big surprise for you. You love surprises.

Things have been really good, even though I'm still stuck in this same place. The longing to wander and roam about the world is still churning in me, hot and furious like the core of the earth. I still can't afford to do that, but I'm less anxious about that now.

Things have been incredibly good lately.

And yet, as I sit here tapping at the keyboard, this isn't the reason I write to you.

Most things are good, but that deadly loneliness still writhes inside, bearing its teeth and snapping its ugly jaws at me on nights like tonight. Thoughts I had long ago buried resurface daily, and they tear me apart.

There's a cavernous, angry trench in me. It begs me on its knees for "company". It weeps for someone to come and fill that space. Bridge the divide. Find me.

"But who could ever fill that space?" I ask, bitterly. There's no one in the world who could see the depths of my soul and understand - and love - those parts of me.

And - if for some reason, God decided to create someone else on this earth who felt as deeply, who hungered to understand the brokenness of others, who was as tender and desperate inside as I am - why would they want me?

I'm a train wreck of contradictions, so fixated on becoming the person I think I'm meant to become, so flippant with the decisions in my life, so utterly and inexcusably plain.

I'm plain.

In fact, "Savannah" means plain.

A flat expanse of land, barren, thirsty; ever reaching, never finding.

Perhaps it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Perhaps it's just who I was created to be.

But it still stings. Friends and family will bump me with their elbows and jokingly suggest impossible things.

"When we go to that concert in February, you're going to catch his eye and 'he' will come over to you, I just know it!"

"You never know, 'he' could stop into your store and just fall head over heels for you."

And that's the thing about wallflowers: when you're close to us, you see the beautiful little details about us that strangers cannot see. You think "certainly this wallflower is more lovely than other wallflowers. Perhaps it isn't a wallflower at all, but really a rose instead."

But you're only showing off a funny looking cabbage to everyone else and calling it a "rose".

I am not a rose, nor a daisy, nor a peony, nor a tulip, and I will never be. 

And though I appreciate the sentiment, making me believe (for however fleeting the moment may be) that I am anything more than a cabbage only gives me a false hope.

Savannah, I'm sorry to do this to you. This isn't the letter you deserve, and it's Christmas Eve. Go to bed. Open your presents.

I will be here, dancing around my living room while listening to music made by a gentleman so deep and lovely and beautiful that he could never - would never - be bothered to know of my existence.

Have a little extra eggnog this year, kiddo. For me.

God knows I could use it.

You are valuable, Savannah, even when that value can't be seen by outsiders.

Love,
Yourself

A letter to my younger self: apologies concerning an uncertain future

Dear Savannah,

I've written you a dozen or so letters now, though I fear I may have given you the impression that there is any semblance of a certain future ahead for you - for us.

As I write this one (and I've rewritten it over and over in my head a hundred different times these last couple weeks), I have to take pauses - breaths - between sentences. I knit between my dishevelled thoughts, mostly to take my mind off of it.

The truth is, I reread these letters to you every couple days, hoping for some sort of answer. It's silly how we do that. We look into our own words, our own minds, expecting to find something we missed before, something only recently relevant to our situation.

And after reading these letters (and wishing I were old enough to drink in this country, because I would do well to have a nice old bottle of red wine to myself on nights like these), I open up a new document and pound feebly at the keys until my heart is raw and I retreat to the emptiness of the bed I share with my sister.

The truth is, sweet, wide-eyed little girl, that I have no answers for you or for me. I can tell you the simple things, like how your heart will throb from emotional beatings you'll take from nasty friends, but how the pain will pass and you will arise anew, stronger, more compassionate each time. I can tell you about the great things you'll go on to do in high school, like befriending everyone and anyone you can maintain eye contact with (and even some who intimidate you at first). I can tell you about the rush you'll feel going onstage to take your bow as your first lead character.

But what about love? you ask in that hopeless little voice of yours. When do I fall in love?

Oh, silly girl, you'll fall in love with everything. You'll fall in love with ideas, with lyrics, with art, with other peoples' talents. You'll fall for the crookedness of strangers' teeth, and the snorting laughter of close friends, and the fire in the eyes of someone who is studying accounting at university and loving every minute of it. You'll fall in love with ideals, with brokenness, with stories, with poetry, with the stage, with musicians who don't even know that you take up space in the world (good God, will you fall in love with musicians who couldn't possibly be aware of your existence!), with dreams too big for your parents' paycheck, with adventures that will never happen.

You will love all this. But none of it will love you back.

I don't know what the future for me looks like yet. But I can tell you what I know so far:

You will give up on love entirely and not at all. On nights of watching sappy romance movies with your best friends, or after listening to your friend dole out the details of her date with her boyfriend, you'll feel this odd tugging at your chest, like something so great and big is swelling within you, tearing your ribcage apart at the seams. You'll bottle it inside until you find the dark sanctuary of your bedroom, where you'll curl up, squeeze your pillow impossibly tight to your body, then after you've had a good cry, you'll sleep for far too long.

On other nights, you'll have decided you cannot possibly be loved. You're too plain, too needy, too short, too everything, all at once. Boys don't notice you, and the ones who do usually do so with probing, hungry eyes. Not a man in the world exists who will understand you, and after disgruntled car-ride conversations with your sister at midnight, you will resign yourself to this conclusion. You'll get home, toss back the sheets, deny yourself the comfort of a pillow to cuddle, and curl up tight in the dark, tears slipping down your cheeks.

The thing is, you haven't given up on love because you aren't interested in finding it. You haven't given up because you want to end up alone. You haven't given up because you prefer to be on your own.

You give up when you realize that the terrifying voice in your heart was, is, and always will be right: there is no one for you, Savannah.

And this would be tolerable, if you didn't have to sit by and watch all your friends hurry up and pair off. You'll watch them walk down the aisle toward each other, and you'll be invited to baby showers before you hit twenty. And that dream you had when you were little will not so much fly out the window as it will clumsily tumble over the edge and splatter on the ground.

And you'll be here, typing away letters to a younger, more hopeful you at 4 a.m., wishing you had a bottle of wine and some serious painkillers to knock you out so you could fall asleep without the tearful routine every night.

I'm sorry, Savannah. I wish I could tell you that you go travelling Europe as soon as you get out of high school, or that you get to go study theatre at your absolute dream school, or that you meet someone who makes you feel alive for once.

But I can't.

Because it just doesn't happen.

Because this world isn't about making wishes come true and making people feel whole.

You're valuable, Savannah. I tell you this and I hope you'll trust me. There are other things in life besides love, but I won't lie to you and tell you it doesn't hurt every night, knowing you will end up alone.

Love, Yourself

A letter to my younger self: concerning the boy who never existed.

My sweet Savannah,

I'm sorry for the pain this will cause you.

(I can hear you shuddering already, afraid to read on. Read on. To keep believing a lie will hurt more than having your beliefs shattered while you're still young. I can promise you this.)

They told you that God had a man picked out just for you. They told you that God had the "right man" waiting for you. They said that whenever the timing was right, God would give that man a gentle nudge in your direction, and upon seeing you, his heart would melt and he'd be compelled to lavish you in kisses and sweep you off your feet and fulfil every whimsical notion you had about romance.

Perhaps they didn't outright use those words, but the idea was heavily implied.

This was, is, and will always be, a lie.

(It's alright to pause here. Breathe. Close your eyes. Breathe some more.

Now come back.)

This news is the last thing you wanted to hear. You've clung to this idea - this hope - that God would deliver you from your perpetual loneliness at the right moment by ushering in a man who was customized just for you. It was a sweet, delicious lie to buy in to, and I don't blame you for being so eager to take the bait.

You were so young when they started telling you. You almost thought that this promise was written in the Bible somewhere, probably italicised and emboldened. 

You're not to blame those women who helped you toward this lie. They were (and are) just victims of the same miseducation.

And you're not to be angry with God. God didn't tell you that He had a human being waiting in the wings of your life, void of personality and passion and  identity until you found him.

But God doesn't have a person waiting for you. He doesn't. People marry all the time, divorce all the time, date and break up, die alone.

He doesn't send you signs, directing you to your "future husband". He doesn't whisper names in your ear.

The boy doesn't exist, Savannah.

The boy you expect to be perfect for you, literally heaven-sent, devoid of all flaws; he has never existed.

Sorry. I am.

I'm sorry, because I know how this is going to shred your insides up, gut your chest, scoop the hope from your lungs.

But if you don't know now, you'll keep waiting for some fictional character to show up in the darkest moments of your life. You'll walk down shady alleys, under bridges, vacant parking lots, and you'll just expect someone to show up and save you in your moment of danger.

But he will never show up. Because that's not how people work. We don't just exist whenever someone needs us.

So stop standing outside screaming at God for not giving you someone He never promised you from the beginning.

Stop going to concerts expecting to make eye contact with one of the band members and having them approach you after the show.

No one is going to ask you out to coffee.

No one is going to blow into your life like an autumn leaf.

No one is going to chase you down because "God" sent them.

God is not your personal match-maker. He cares about you, yes, but He's also the Creator of the universe. He has so much going on that He shouldn't have to deal with your love life on top of everything else.

Yeah, He can do all things.

Doesn't mean He will.

You need to crush this idea that the "perfect man" is waiting on you to reach your potential, or get your life together, or whatever. Crush this idea before it crushes you.

Be cynical.

Your heart is soft and so willing to gobble up any hope, but you need to build some callouses. This world is so tough and cruel.

Build some callouses. Guard your own heart. Be cynical about "love".

Sweet little one, this news is hard but necessary, because if you don't know the truth now, you'll find yourself curling up in a bed you can't sleep in, diving into fantasies where someone steps into your life and fills the hole in your chest. You'll forget to live.

Savannah, please, don't fall asleep with this false hope. Sever the tie.

You are so much more valuable than you know, even when you accept these lies into your life.

Love,
Yourself

A letter to my younger self: concerning the kind of heart you crave.

Sweet, tiny Savannah,

Your heart was made to love a musician's.

It was carved by hand from a tree some boy with a guitar and a heart full of melody must have sat underneath on a warm June afternoon some time long before you were born. This is the only explanation for it.

I suppose many girls say the same thing:

"I just want to date a boy who sings and plays guitar."

"I have a thing for musicians."

Perhaps this is too common of a verdict. Perhaps you're heart is no different from the hearts of those other girls. Perhaps craving the heart of a musician is just something that happens to girls your age.

But I think you know deep within your frame, burrowed under your ribs, that this isn't true. I think you know, writhing within you, straining against the weight of your organs, that your heart was made to crave the heart of a musician.

It's always been like this. You've always longed for the touch of someone who felt as deeply as you. Someone who could talk for hours about life, fears, love, struggles, darkness, beauty, pain, and sensuality. Someone whose own heart cannot function without being able to partake in the creation of art, the stringing together of words, the entwining of melodies to feelings of wrath and joy and pain and desire.

Concerts are spiritual moments in time for you.

There's something wildly alluring about watching musicians perform. Sweat dripping from their skin, flung to the audience with every head toss. You watch in anxious anticipation, hands extended to those musicians you're particularly moved by, not sure what you're hoping for (a touch, maybe), but yearning to somehow soak in their presence.

They're messy and raw and drenched to their shoes in sweat, and you can't help the longing in your gut to get impossibly close to them.

Perhaps this alone doesn't set you apart in your lust for a musical heart. That's fair.

But your longing dives deeper still. A musical heart is sensitive, emotional, unbridled. It's a heart driven by love for words and rhythm and passion, not a love for money or stability or complacency. A musical heart is one that knows beyond all doubt what the remedy for pain is.

Savannah, your heart is so perfect for - so ready to love - this kind of heart.

But there's a great divide between being ready to love and being loved, and I'm not sure if the latter will ever come.

There's more to loving a musician than attending concerts and memorizing lyrics. Falling in love at a distance is dangerous, and I have to warn you, because I know how fragile your heart is.

You can't expect to float through life as a wallflower, waiting for the things you want to gravitate toward you.

When they told you that a meek and mild heart would draw in a guy worth investing your heart in, they were wrong.

Meek and mild is great. Fantastic. Marvellous. Extraordinary.

But it can become a trap.

You have to be brave. You have to speak. You have to bloom. Because if you don't, no one will ever know who you are.

The world is not a place where wishes are granted and dreams come true for those who are quiet and docile.

You have to ask.

But, here's the terrible news:

you won't.

Because, by the time you catch on that only those who chase after what they want see the pay off, you'll be mounted to the wall, pinned into place, your leaves stapled to the drywall. You'll have no idea how to exist in a world where the world doesn't just pan out for those who merely pray for it to be so.

By all means, pray. Pray to God that this aching in your chest will be eased, that these reaching fingers will find someone tangible to hold onto. Pray.

But don't expect to see anything happen.

Savannah, your heart was made to love a musician's. It was hand-crafted from the same tree that was cut down and hollowed out into a violin, a guitar, a piano. When you hear the gentle picking of guitar strings, you'll feel it resonate in your chest, calling out to it's cousin who lives in your chest and pumps blood through your veins.

Savannah, you were made with the desire to hold a musician, to soothe him, kiss his cheeks, run your fingers through his hair, and make him tea on restless nights of angry song-writing.

But Savannah, who says you're different from all the other girls who feel the same way?

I have to tell you, I have no idea how to end this letter tonight.

I sit here with headphones pressed to my ears, volume turned up so the bass drowns out the sound of this hungry heart of ours, sorrow thick in my throat.

Because I know that you will always be a wallflower. You will never ask for what isn't offered to you. You will break your gaze when someone stares too long into your eyes.

You've been like this for so long, I think you think that to be anything other than a wallflower is shameful, selfish. Scary.

It's scary. It is. I know it is.

I'm not altogether convinced that your heart was only made to love a musician's, though. I've started to think this is how you're meant to be for the rest of your life: quiet, meek, ashamed of taking up space.

Alone.

Maybe that's not a bad thing.

But you have to let go of this idea that God has a man picked particularly for you; that He's just waiting for you to reach some romantic potential until He has your paths intersect.
(There's more on this, but not tonight. Your heart needs a rest after this.)

Nothing is waiting for you.

Go looking, or don't bother at all.

But you are valuable, even though it's hard to see sometimes.

Love,
Yourself

A letter to my younger self: concerning a lonely and longing heart.

Dearest weary-hearted Savannah,

You were born with a heart much too big and hands much too small. Mind too loud and mouth too soft. Shoulders strong enough to help carry others, and knees too weak to stand up for yourself.

You are precious and this mustn't be forgot. You have navigated a world of knives, needles, claws and teeth, and managed to come out the better for it. In a place full of hurting and bitterness, you have trespassed in Fear's own backyard, marching to the pounding in your chest.

Your heart - as flawed and tattered and worn as it may be - strives for justice and courage and tenderness. Your heart is a marvel.

But your heart craves a love it may never see, and I need to warn you of this in case you develop the notion that love for you lies around ever corner, anticipating the moment of your collision with it.

Someone told you that for every pot there is a lid, but they were wrong.

Some pots don't need lids.

Some pots aren't pots at all.

Knowing you as well as I do, I have the belief that perhaps you may not be a pot, but perhaps a strainer, or a cookie sheet, or a ladle.

But not a pot.

I don't mean to dishearten you, though somewhere in me I know that this news will crumple your heart like a blotted page of paper in an artist's frustrated hands.

What's the point? you'll ask. What's the point of this heart that only knows how to pour, pour, pour out love? 

Where is the reward?

What is the point?

And there is none.

And I'm sorry.

You never ask for much. You never have and I doubt you ever will. I'd say you have simple taste, but that wouldn't be the truth. In fact, you have dreams much too big for your bank account. You desire education you will never be able to afford. You eagerly await a miracle so you can live out the craving in your soul to create art on a professional platform.

(This is another thing you must let go of, but that is a story for another time.)

But that's not what I mean.

You've always been too embarrassed, too timid to ask for anything of significance to you. Your parents have struggled with money for so long that sometimes even asking for groceries on especially tough nights made you feel sick to your stomach with guilt. You've always been afraid of overwhelming them.

But you've always felt a cavernous craving in your chest for someone to love and love deeply with. It was a strange sensation at first and you didn't know what to make of it. You'd feel the tug, the ache, the growling within. You'd feel the lurching of your heart, the fingers of your soul reaching out.

Grasping. Groping the air.

Savannah, sweet little one, this feeling never goes away. On some nights it will have faded, but it will always flare back up, worse than before.

This loneliness, this longing, will become easier, though. A comfort, even.

A companion, even.

Soon, you'll feel the cool wind whistling through the gaping hole in your chest and you will revel in the satisfaction of it. Eventually, you will welcome the pain. It gets better.

No, not better. Easier.

The fact is, not all hearts are meant to be loved in the way you have longed for.

You'll never feel the touch of another body on your skin.

You'll never partake in breath-taking kisses or intimate breaths.

Instead, little one, you will turn your music up loud, lay back, cozy up to your pillows, and you will sleep alone. 

Some prayers do not get answered, and perhaps for the better.

And that's ok.

You are valuable, even alone.

Love,
Yourself

A letter to my younger self: concerning the good year.

Dear little Savannah,

A day will come when your heart will splinter and crack and you will feel as though there is not enough glue - not enough love in the world - to ever fix the damage.

This day will turn into a week, a couple months, a year and a half. In truth, you will look back on the day and not be able to pinpoint it. You will look back and say, "Perhaps it has always been this way inside?"

I don't say this to scare you, but to prepare you. I wish someone would have prepared me.

You see, this hurting, this ache in your soul, will pass.

Not all at once. It will happen like the slipping of sand through an hourglass.

And then, little one, will come the good year: the year you fall in love.

It will be a hard kind of love. The kind of love you battle with inside. The kind of love you want to hide, lest others think poorly of you. The kind of love that will keep you up in the night, your heart overflowing with questions for her.

You will consider things about her that you hadn't given much thought before the good year arrives and brings you a fresh set of eyes and an open heart.

You will fall in love with her perspective of the world, how words are a matter of life to her, how she insists that, were she not petrified of needles and hopelessly indecisive, she would be covered in tattoos.

You will fall in love with the fact that she has her favorite stanzas of poetry memorized.

You will fall in love with the way she looks when she first wakes up in the morning, puffy eyes and all. You will fall in love with her messy mane of hair that never seems to conform to either societal standards or the employment of bobby pins.

You will fall in love with her at concerts, how her body has such a natural rhythm as she shrugs and bounces and bobs in the crowd to the sound of the bass.

You will fall in love with how she blooms onstage. You will fall in love with her dedication for her craft and her great big dreams that are much too big for her wallet. You will fall in love with the raw demand of her soul to create art, no matter the cost. 

You will fall in love with her love for others. You will fall in love with her darkness and her struggle. You will fall in love with the moments of fear she has, followed by the moments of bravery that the moments of fear provoke.

You will fall in love with her, and that will be the good year.

You see, little one, the good year is the year you fall in irrevocable love with yourself.

The good year is the year that you will sit in more silence than you're used to. It's the year you sit back and watch yourself very closely. It's a great long year of singleness with a touch of loneliness. It's the year you learn to drive and discover why your mother liked to take long drives alone at night when her heart was weary. It's the year of realizing that men should not be seen through rose-colored sunglasses, but should be considered very closely before committing you heart to one. It's a year of smothering the whispering voice in your head that pokes and prods your body from within.

The good year is on the horizon, dear one. Fight to see the dawn of the good year and you will finally let out the breath you've been holding.

You are valuable, and that is what the good year will teach you.

Love,
Yourself