A letter from my younger self

I don’t recognize you. You’ve traded away so many pieces of us. You’ve moved the dial on everything. On love, on politics, on money.

I watch you sit at tables with strangers you disagree with, watch you dutifully handle the mundane necessities of life, watch you make excuses for what used to be important.

But I see it too. You don’t have the peaks and valleys of our soul. You’ve found a way through the middle without ever turning your back on the edges.

You carry our darkness stronger, and you take care of things. I mean somehow what always felt so urgent to me, to us, you can sit with. And you can sharpen your knives and oil your cutting boards. You learned how to drive.

You’ve been so many places but you’ve created one, your home, that’s your favorite. It would be my favorite too.

I think I can see deeply that your beliefs haven’t changed but you’ve created a container where they don’t drive you mad. Where you have friends and love and you’re doing ok.

I can see now that more than anything you’ve created a place where I could be myself, a place that existed for me only in strange pockets of radical independence, you’ve made a home where you can move how you want, bake how you want, take care of yourself and others how you want.

I don’t understand what you do or how you do it, but I can see why, and I love you. I want to come visit. It looks nice there. I don’t take up much space and I’m happy to be helpful. I’ll shovel the snow at two am while you get your full nights rest. And I’ll get you training again. Like really training, if you want.

I can’t believe you teach. That’s the most absurd. Teachers stood in the way of everything for us. Their needs, their egos, their self important everything. A snarky English teacher both the person failing me out of prep and not passing me at Bloomfield high. They looked at me and knew, somehow, that I had to learn a lesson. And that lesson, somehow you learned what they wished you had, but also, what they never could have expected, what you really needed to.

I don’t understand that you teach but I love how you teach. How you let people do what they want, become who they want. And I love that you can listen to someone deeply that you disagree with. And I love that you would still give the shirt off your back to a stranger and how you never hesitate to help someone move, or move.

I’ve been watching you for a long time. And if you go too far I’ll say something. But just like when you watch a kid about to do something that might be dangerous, I’ll ask you gently, I’ll encourage your exploration.

With cautious adoration, like an orchid, I will tend to you. I will love you into being.