from your seventeen-year-old self

My Dear FutureMe,

I want you to have all the most beautiful words and thoughts in the world... but I feel like I have no words for you. I feel... I feel everything for you right now. You know?

The world is an utterly huge and terrifyingly (beautiful) place... the future is just the same, only more so. And if it weren't for you, my dearest most bright Future Me, I do not think I'd have the courage to go on right now. I think I am scared sometimes, because school has finished, and I'll be moving out of home next year, and everything's happening and I'm not as thin as I could be. And in my mind, you are perfect, you are everything I want to become, everything I will become.

I'm listening to Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls today, and Coldplay music, and 'I Don't Like Mondays'... this is my depressive music, that overwhelming feeling, that flood tide feeling, because I'm a teenager and I don't know what I'm doing, really.

Well, I'll give myself one more minute, and then I'll smile for you, darling Future Self. You are too good for me. You're giving me a reason to smile, you are, you are making this world a better place, you are making history, you are banishing negativity, you are changing this world for the better, just by... being.

I know you've got all these great plans for the future, and all these things you want to change, and all these negative thoughts you're keeping at bay, but I also know you've got this supernova of happiness inside you. I know this, because it's here in my life, too. And something as beautiful and bright as this happiness in my life can't come from nowhere... it's you, my dear. This happiness is your creation. I really believe that.

See, I am really really happy, really. My existential moments of despondency are fleeting. Life is small, my love, but Happiness is huge. Like, epic epic of epic proportions. And I'm not forgetting that.

There is some small part of me that is worried - desperately worried about the past and the future and the present. Tomorrow is my Society & Culture exam, my last HSC exam, the last last bit of school work I'll ever do. I need to get all these things done. I'm going away for a few weeks, and I know it'll be a brilliant holiday and God is always with me (you too, darling?), but it is a lot of work. I'll be going to Uni next year, moving away and never ever going back to school with my same old lovely beautiful girls (who, by the way, know every last little once-debilitating secret of mine. Rejoice!) And, you know, I keep making great intentions and making mistakes and saying the wrong thing. And I'm not as thin as I could be. Yes, there is a part of me that is desperately worried about too many things. But you know what?

There is a huger brighter part of me that is utterly completely in love with the world, excited about the adventures to come, overjoyed with the possibility of a Future Self as beautiful as you. It is most terrifying and beautiful, this life is.

And when I feel this brightness, this epic and ridiculous supernova of Happiness, unjustified uncontained unrealistic unplanned impossible sort of Happiness... I feel your power here with me, and I really really know it's you, my dear Future Self. Just your existence is bringing me hope and warmth and joy and strength. Forget the rules the laws the expectations, and just for a moment I want you to do nothing but exist. And in that moment realise that you are still everything to me, my beautiful flawless being of hope and truth. Yeah, that's you, even when you're not even trying. To me, you are perfect.

Still skeptical? Look at it this way. There is mountain loads of Happiness in my life. That, my dear one, I cannot deny. You know what I'm going on about, I trust you understand me on that one, because I can go on and on about supernovas but it doesn't even come close to properly describing the immensity of what is inside me... right now, right here, right now. And each new and wonderful miracle of a day is better than the last - it's true!! I think to myself Wow, surely this is as Happy as Happy gets, but sure enough the next day is even brighter. This is an endless supernova, it seems, my love.

Well, because each day I get closer to you, the brighter the sun feels, the wetter the water feels, the Happier this Happy feels, the lovelier the love is, the closer to God, the colours have intensified minute by minute ... it's more than more and more absurd than the impossible infiniteness of this wild and wonderful universe. I'm convinced it's you, my dear one, the closer I am to you, it all feels so much more radiant and rich, the colours, the feelings, the love, the hope, this Happiness.

You are so tremendously magnificent, in fact, that the Happiness you have today simply cannot be contained by the confines of a single day. It leeches far into your past, it leaks, it spills, it overflows... to me. There is an amazingly constant surge of this Happiness, a supernova that tells me all is well in the future, all is well, all is well.

And even if that is the only this you've got, the only thing you've ever done for anyone on this dear fleeting earth. That, my love, is enough. Bask in your accomplishment, revel in your victory, arise in your resplendence, celebrate this Happiness.

I'm not worried any more. Disregard my quiet mumblings about depressive music and terrifying futures. Let go of my doubts, and shoo away your own small hesitations. There is much to be decisive about, there is a great and beautiful war going on, and for as long as we breathe we must fight this ineffable battle for infinite stakes. It's not about wealth or health or land or race or religion, because in the end I think we're all the same, and a war against people is a hopeless distraction because really we should be fighting for our Happiness, fighting to give our Future Selves a chance to glow and exist in all their majestic brilliance. That, I guess, is what I'm doing for you, and I know you're doing the same for me. I feel it, I know it, I live it every waking moment of my days. Even when I sleep, I sleep with peace and my soul is awake with the universe, and beyond the confines of time and space, I am with you, fighting alongside you. We are here together, we are never alone, and I almost cry with awe, contemplating the knowledge that I have always got you here with me.

We are fighting for our Happiness, this shared-and-halved-and-multiplied-again sort of Happiness, this glowing racing surging absurdity of supernova Happiness. Yes, we are fighting, and, my love, we are winning. Victory is ours, well beyond our tiny human capacity of comprehension.

You are a worthy ally. I'll see you when the sun goes down.

With an infinite amount of love and good tidings,
from your seventeen-year-old self.
xx