My Past Self Helped Me Out of a Downward Spiral of Negativism
Almost a year ago I was in a bad place mentally. I hadn’t gotten into my desired university degree, I wasn’t comfortable with my body, and I lost a lot of friendships. I felt lonely and guilty, and when people feel that way, they tend to self-sabotage. And that’s what I had been doing for weeks when I got the email.
I came within a hair’s breadth of not seeing it. I am one of those people who subscribe to a thousand programs, shops, and events, and I receive up to 50 emails a day. Between so much advertising, I almost missed it. It was from Future Me, a platform where you can write online letters to your future self, and they send them to you on the date you choose. I didn’t even remember writing one.
The strangest thing (and at the same time, the best) is to realize that the email was not written for you by anyone else, but by you. That makes it infinitely special, and at the same time tends to make you reflect in a way that no non-self-written letter would be able to. I started reading it, not knowing what to expect.
I didn’t have to go further than the first line to feel a shiver. A past version of myself, from two years before, greeted me with an enthusiasm I remembered having, but no longer saw reflected in my features. She told me about her friendships, the ones she hoped would be lifelong, and the ones I now knew would not last. It broke my soul a little.
However, she also expressed her dissatisfaction with certain attitudes of these friends, as well as her desire for them to change. I smiled ruefully. They never changed, and that was part of the reason we had grown apart. However, reading how bad some things about them hurt me made me realize that the guilt I had been feeling for months made no sense. It wasn’t my fault, but the toxicity of those I considered friends.
She also talked about her dreams, about getting into her degree, and the grade she wanted to get in the university entrance exams. It was then that I realized that I had far surpassed that grade — why had I been so disappointed with a grade that past me would pay to get? I realized that I had been raising my standards to points that were almost impossible to achieve and that in reality what attracted me most to the degree course I was so eager to enter was the cut-off mark.
Finally, she talked about the importance of loving herself, a subject I have always struggled with, and wondered if she would ever be able to look in the mirror and embrace the girl staring back at her. Another shudder ran through me at that moment, when I realized that I was still the same (or worse) on this issue than I was two years ago.
I could have sunk deeper, but I did not. I decided to write another letter to come to me in the next two years and resolved to change everything that wasn’t good for me. To take action and not just have a nostalgic reaction. Now, a year later, I can say that next year’s me will be more than proud to have received her letter and will feel very different from how I felt reading mine.
