A Letter to Myself

For A Letter to Myself, I’d use this as the body:

A Letter to Myself

Today would have been my 19th wedding anniversary.

For a long time, I thought that date would always mean something about the life I built with someone else.

But today, I found myself thinking about the girl I was before all of that.

Before marriage.
Before betrayal.
Before motherhood changed me.
Before survival became such a large part of my identity.

I thought about her and wondered:

What did she want?

Not what did she think she was supposed to want.

Not what would make everyone else happy.

Not what would keep the peace.

Not what would make her lovable, useful, needed, chosen, or good.

What did she want?

And I realized how long it has been since I asked myself that question.

Somewhere along the way, I became very good at giving myself away.

I learned how to anticipate everyone else’s needs.

How to make things easier.

How to hold things together.

How to be understanding.

How to forgive.

How to stay.

How to keep trying.

And somewhere inside all of that effort, I lost track of myself.

Not completely.

She was still there.

The girl who laughed easily.

The girl who had ideas and dreams and opinions.

The girl who believed her life belonged to her.

The girl who did not yet understand that she would someday confuse love with endurance.

I wish I could go back and tell her something.

I would tell her:

You don’t have to give yourself away to be loved.

You do not have to shrink so someone else can feel big.

You do not have to ignore what you know in order to keep someone comfortable.

You do not have to earn love by tolerating pain.

You do not have to abandon yourself to prove that you are loyal.

And you are allowed to leave places where you are no longer safe, seen, or cherished.

I can’t go back and change what happened to her.

But maybe that isn’t what healing asks of me.

Maybe healing is not going backward.

Maybe it is turning toward that younger version of myself and saying:

You didn’t disappear. I found you.

I am still learning who I am now.

I am still separating what I actually want from what I learned to accept.

I am still discovering which parts of me survived and which parts are ready to come back to life.

But I know this much:

I do not want to spend the rest of my life abandoning myself in order to keep other people.

I’ve done enough of that.

So maybe this anniversary can mean something different now.

Not the anniversary of a marriage that ended.

Maybe it can be a marker.

A reminder.

The day I stopped looking backward at the life I thought I was supposed to have and started asking myself what I want the life ahead of me to become.

And to the girl I used to be:

I’m sorry it took me so long.

But I’m coming back for you.

And this time, you get to come with me.