To My Younger Self
The events in our lives are not passing landmarks along a road, they are rings of a tree. We don’t cruise right on past who we used to be. Instead, we develop new layers surrounding those that came before. Our younger selves are not behind us like a town in the review mirror, they are contained within us. Just below the surface of our newest growth layer lies everything that we used to be. All the wounds, all the hurt, the joy, the laughter, and the lightness, all that defined our younger years is still right there underneath who we now are.
When we choose to speak to those younger parts we are not communicating with ghosts, we are directly in touch with those still-living parts of ourselves. Just as their words, actions, and habits have influenced us, so too can ours influence them. As more grown and mature beings we have the ability show up for those younger parts in a way that nobody could back then. The letter that follow is a practice in that. An attempt to re-parent and guide myself into a more loving and whole direction. I hope that it inspires you to begin communicating with your own younger parts as an exercise in healing and self-understanding.
Dear Brother,
The insecurity you try so hard to cover up with substances and shitty behavior is leaking from your eyes, evident to anyone paying attention. You disregard the well being of your family, yourself, and the world, clinging to a caustic attitude like a piece of driftwood keeping you afloat in an ocean of identity. You know how to swim! You can let all that go and be just fine, it’s only a matter of trust.
I love you. I forgive you... but you need to understand how badly you’re fucking up right now. Each second of life on this earth is a gift so rare and precious that it can’t be found with the Hubble telescope. Do you understand? Your soul has picked up the controller of your body, NOW, so it can play the game of Human existence. The best ever made.
All those stories you hold about why you’re broken, what’s wrong with you, why you’re not worthy of love? That feeling of being fundamentally flawed? All bullshit. Fiction of the highest order. Mistrust and fear, tightening your grip around objects not made to be grasped so hard, tearing your hands. Be gentle. Practice ease and delight in all you do
Your actions are scribbled sloppily onto the pages of a book you will never be able to rewrite. Other people are reading. Your mother, your father, your grandparents. Your brother is reading with particular attention to detail. He will follow you into the places you lead, ESPECIALLY when you don’t want him to. Those interactions with your immediate family that you’re too busy to really show up for? Those are ONE TIME opportunities to learn about who and why you are, they will never come again. Getting fucked up is more important though, isn’t it?
The ignorance evident in your behavior brings suffering deeper than you are capable of understanding. Your screaming deviant expression pierces the ear drums of people you claim to love. It’s just as foreign to everyone as it is to you, Love, but all do their best. Your mother, your father, your family, all Love you to the fullest extent that is possible for them at any given moment. You shithead!! You’re NEVER as alone as you tell yourself. NEVER as independent as you assert. Lies you scream back at a mind howling in pain. Let it howl and don’t yell back, it needs love too.
All those messages from the world that made you feel unwelcome into the tribe of humanity? They were sent by people who are themselves lost and looking for found. Junk mail of the heart, go ahead and toss them out. The ridicule and judgment has nothing to do with your worth as a human. It has nothing to do with theirs, either. Those innumerable hours spent brooding in anger and resentment? Absolutely wasted.
A thin membrane is all that ever separates isolation from love, inclusion from exclusion. You can pierce it anytime. You could be laughing in community, enjoying connection. You could have all the love you want. Instead, you CHOOSE fear and insecurity. Every line of high voltage anxiety you shrink from is a handrail on a staircase leading directly to the only heaven that really exists. Every judgment thrown at you is a shrouded GIFT. A chance to glance the unseen art lying in the corners of your own house. To help you see places the light of your own awareness does not reach. Seek those gifts actively, with abandon.
You’ll resist this but Magick is real. God, The Universe, The Big Electron. The words for it all suck, it’s not about them anyway. We call it Spirit, as a placeholder. It’s messages are constant, hidden behind layers of past and future. It speaks through people, places, and situations. Get quiet enough and you might hear its words.
You already know all of this, but just haven’t named it yet. Let me save you the time. Beauty and Creativity are the higher callings of all humans, you included. Search for them recklessly. Everything else is incidental. Know that everything is as it should be. That where you are, what you are feeling, the nonsense running through your mind right now, it’s all exactly perfect. Get out of the way. Let yourself be too goddamn much.
I know this is confusing. That it probably sounds like a bunch of bullshit to you... but just trust me.
TRUST ME!
For the love of god please trust me…
I LOVE YOU,
YOU