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