Letter to Self: Homeward

Jan 1, 2018

4 min read

On bad life lessons:

You are too kind to others than you are with yourself. I need you to start catering for yourself the same way you were taught to be tender when handling anything fragile, they forgot to mention that you are also one of those things.

So you grow up thinking that the most important thing to do, is to find someone who’s going to love you, the kind of love that's meant to complete you. I need you to unlearn that. You are the person that needs to love you. The kind of love where you don't label everything that makes you different as a flaw.

You are your true constant. You have always been there, you are always going to be there, and you are the only person who’s ever going to get it. The only one who knows how deep your pain goes and understands how lonely the world gets at times. You need to learn how to hold yourself without calling it loneliness. And how to cry yourself into acceptance without feeling lost.

On hurt,

You have let the hurt misguide you into a false sense of solitude, of always feeling people's absence when you are alone and wanting to fill it with lovers that took your hurt as a weakness. And filling your sanctuary with lovers who could never learn to love you right and whose presence left you emptier when all you needed was how to not feel so alone in a crowded place. It is okay, you needed to learn then, how to not make a home out of temporary people. Out of boys who think giving sad girls like yourself second love, affords them a free ticket into manhood. You needed to learn from them that just because it feels something like love, it doesn’t make it love. You will know better next time.

I know the universe hasn’t always been kind to you. And the universe doesn’t need further assistance from you in doing that. I have come today to let you know that it’s time to forgive yourself.

On Forgiveness:

Before the forgiveness settles flat in your heart ready to teach you how to become softer with yourself, there has to be some mending that needs to take place first. The mending takes place when you finally decide to come back home to yourself. When you finally accept your mistakes, your shortcomings, your disappointments, your faults, for what they really are. It is time to return the pain, the grief, the rage, and failures back to the lesson’s den. They have done what they needed to do and you are too soft and magical to let them make a home out of you.

I know now, that the mending will eventually take place after the acceptance and the letting go, when I am brave enough to confront the girl starring back at me in the mirror. The mending will continue every time I wake up and decide to not hide my magic from the universe.

Isa, I understand 2017 has been as challenging as the years can get, but that is not an excuse to doubt yourself this much. The challenges were not meant to strip you off your confidence. You are so much more than the things you’ve come to believe yourself as. You are capable of achieving all your dreams.

On Celebrating the Self

You have a beautiful heart, so tender, so understanding, so messy, so real, so fierce and it makes loving you such an adventure. Whoever that made you believe that some of these things weren’t yours to hold on to, gave you a headstart at making yourself less beautiful every time you wished away a part of yourself. They made you grow a little blind to your own beauty. It is time to gather yourself whole. All of you, from your stubborn hair and all the way to your size 3 feet.

It is time to unravel at your own beauty, at how:

The dots on your face aren’t misplaced. It doesn’t matter where on the face they are, as long as they can remind you every day that you are beautiful, then they are exactly where they need to be.

Your graceless laugh doesn’t need to be tamed. It does not need to be silenced, that's how your soul has come to know of happiness.

Your breath: each and every one you wished away and the one you prayed to be your last, I am glad it never listened to you. I hope you know now that you are meant to be here.

Your thighs: there is nothing wrong in how they hug and kiss each other with every step you take, maybe that’s how your body demands you love it.

Your existence: every minute of it is worth a celebration. Maybe that’s what they mean, about coming back to yourself, when you finally start seeing yourself who you really are. The magic that you are. A girl, who is growing more in love with her skin like the sun shines right through it and you’ve been glowing ever since you said ‘I am ready to love you’ and you meant it. I love that you can laugh out loud, your graceless laugh without the shame of being too loud.