A bright and shiny egg

The first thing I will tell you is that the guy that got you all confused in the first place, the one that pushed you over the edge and made you gay grew up to be ordinary. His face has changed for the worse, he has a belly and you wouldn't notice him in a crowd. All your fantasies about him would gross me out now. Like, eww. What are you thinking?



You will change, because that's the way of the world. Physically, emotionally, intellectually. Although they wouldn't happen all at the same time. Don't worry about your weight. You will lose 60 pounds in college and gain 20 back. You will be scarily thin (108lbs) before you will bounce back to a more normal weight. Your face will change, although your feelings about it will not. You will still hate what you see in the mirror. So I guess that's not much of a change then. And maybe I am wrong about the ways of the world.

You will spend most of your 20s confused. You will try out many things just so you feel like you're moving on to something, some vague goal like personal happiness and fulfillment. That dream you had when you're young? Well, you're never going to be a doctor. I know you didn't want it, you said it only because it was the only profession you knew when you were three. But you will try out priesthood, because at some point life will be too loud for you, too crazy and noisy. But you will step out anyway, because the seminary will stifle you. You will become exhausted of the schedule: lights off at 11PM, morning prayers at 5AM and mass at 6AM. And you will have to suppress who you are, live a straight life when you've always been crooked. It will take most of your 20s before you will be at peace with yourself. All those years of reading the Bible, the Catechism of the Catholic Church and every religious book in your house--you will have a hard time reconciling all of that with who you are. But you will get there. In your late 20s. I know you'd prefer to get there soon enough, but life is not a race. You will learn to run in your own pace. You will realize that it's not important to be the first on everything, because you're not really excited to reach the finish line. I mean, you wouldn't want to die ahead of everyone, do you? Do you?

You will think of suicide. You will think of how best to kill yourself. You will think of slashing your wrist, drinking a bottle of sleeping pills or throwing yourself at an incoming truck. But you're weak. You will never be able to carry it out. So you will go on living, silently admiring those who had the courage to take their lives away. It's the darkness you will have as you make several trips to a hopeless place. (That's a song reference, just so you know.) I know it doesn't seem much of an emotional growth, but you will become more stable. You will stop writing mushy poems and you will wish you've never written them in the first place. Seriously, dude, you can be too mushy. You make cheese look cynical.

You may say that growing up made me cold and jaded. But this is my letter to you, so stfu. You can write your own letter to your grown-up self and you can tell me everything you didn't become. But I don't think you would know what to say. You didn't even know what course to take in college. You think you're lost, but really you're not. You have so many options you don't know which one to take. You feel that making a choice means forsaking other possibilities and you don't want to give up those other possibilities. You want to be all of it, all at once.

You will study and learn many things, but surprisingly you will still make stupid decisions. And not just about the food you order or the uncoordinated clothes you wear. You will make stupid choices, because you will get tired of thinking and overthinking, you will get tired of always making the decision for yourself. You will say, fuck it and just do it.

This is the price of your independence, the one you've always wanted ever since you were aware of the things around you. You will spend your 20s living alone and no one will tell you what to do, not even when to take a bath. That's what you want, isn't it? You will get it, but it won't be as awesome as you would expect it to be. You will have loneliness on speed dial. And you will sit in coffee shops and smoke and wonder if all of life is spent on waiting.

That rage you have? The one that made you punch your cousin like you were in an action movie then forced dirt in his mouth? You will work it out. You will take tae kwon do lessons, then boxing to work out your anger. Sometimes you will run, you will run as fast as you can to escape yourself. You will become calmer. And bald. Like a bright, shiny egg. You will become settled with yourself and in your skin.

I wish I could say that life would work itself out, that everything would fall into place or that everything would happen for a reason. It won't be neatly wrapped up. There will be loose threads and there will be questions without answers. But you will live with it. You will live with the mystery of your own life. You will not figure it out. But rather, you will make it up as you go. Scary, isn't it? Wouldn't you want to stop growing up now? Wouldn't you want to be there, just stuck there in high school dreaming about the possibilities you have? You could be anything inside your head. It's a tempting notion, but I wouldn't go back to being you. You are someone waiting to be broken. And you will be. But as someone who had gone to the other side of broken, I can tell you that you will be okay, you will be fine. You will grow up to be a different kind of whole, one who has been smashed and splintered, one who would take every broken bit of yourself to make something strange but beautiful.