dear you,
i imagine i’m holding a dated photo of you. some old version, frozen mid-blink, with no clue what your body and brain are about to drag you through. the ruptures. the rebuilds. the quiet surgeries of the spirit. the lessons carved straight into bone. there you are. practical, maybe a bit androgynous, half-tethered to outdated versions of yourself, still soft enough to bruise but stubborn enough to keep moving. i’m already proud of you for surviving things you haven’t even met yet. you’re going to learn that bold, honest beauty decisions can save your life in small, stubborn ways. cutting your hair short enough that people don’t know what box to put you in. getting a tattoo of a nun with her tits out on your shoulder because you’re tired of apologising for having a body at all. buying your first fridge that isn’t secondhand, just to quietly prove to yourself that you deserve new things, solid things, things that are yours alone.
maybe it’s piercing something you were told not to. wearing the outfit that makes old friends squint. deleting the number you only ever text when you hate yourself. throwing out the k-mart mirror that’s seen you pick apart your own face. tiny revolutions and big ones, all lined up like teeth.
these choices will carry you further than a lifetime of tiny self-corrections ever did. all those little adjustments you make to be “easier”, to be liked, to be low-maintenance and non-threatening. they pile up. they become a vicious scripture your body starts reciting on autopilot, a feral doctrine of self-hate whispering that you must always be less to deserve even the crumbs.
and oh, you’re going to learn about consent.
the consent to be kind without being harvested.
the consent to say no without a 4-paragraph essay.
the consent to walk away, mid-sentence, if something in you starts screaming.
being a no person will put heavy gold around your yes. your yes stops being handed out like party favours in a congested tunnel of favours and diluted “miracles”. you start noticing how many of those miracles aren’t yours at all. you start hearing how loud other people’s ideas of “the right thing for you” are, and how quietly your own voice has been trying to speak under them.
and even when it’s inconvenient, your intuition is right.
right when it’s scared.
right when it’s broken.
right when it’s fucking brutal.
right when it’s strangely gentle.
one day, hair hits the floor. another day, a nun with her tits out is bleeding into your skin and you’re grinning because it feels like a prayer to the wrong god and the right self. another day, a brand-new fridge hums in your kitchen and you realise you bought something big and solid just for you, no hand-me-down history attached. each of these is a small riot. a quiet i belong to me.
that’s when the leash snaps.
that’s when you stop begging for instant approval from strangers and start walking like you own your own bones. androgynous starts to mean free. beauty stops asking permission. you start showing up as yourself. messy, quiet, loud, unsure, glowing, migraine-y, hopeful. still you. more you.
so wherever you are, whatever year your “dated photo” is from, hear this you were enough then.
you are enough now.
you will be enough in every weird, future version of you that crawls out of the fire blinking and annoyed and still somehow full of love.
like my favourite nirvana song says, come as you are.
you’re allowed to. that’s the whole point.
from yourself