MY CRYNICLES

A letter to my younger self.

“Life can only be understood backward but it must be lived forward” Søren Kierkegaard.

The goodbye and the hello between my younger self and my present self has a wide unburnt bridge and I am still not halfway close to what I want my future self to be, but I have come to resonate with a lot of things. Here are a few things I will like to say to my younger self or maybe the things I got to learn from my younger self, all embedded in this letter. 

“Dear Adetutu,
I'm honestly proud of how far you have come because life honestly hasn't been the fairest to you. Somehow, you’ve managed to pick yourself up after every fall. You mastered the act of using the saying,

“It’s not about how many times you fall, it’s about how you rise from each fall” or whatnot. 

That’s exactly one thing my present self learned from you, your tenacity! 

To be very fair, you are not in any way the easiest to deal with. Ranging from your stubbornness, your heedless attitude to you always wanting to prove a point and satisfy everybody. 

What a clown! 

You are bloody pathetic. 

You thought you could make everyone like you and see your worth? Except you’re some stash of cash, everyone can’t appreciate you enough!

I’m undoubtedly sure if I had given you a heads up that life was going to batter you and you will have a lot more bad days than good days, you’ll hysterically laugh at me and probably blow me off because you were such an incorrigible kid. Glad you got to learn some of these things the hard way.

Remember when you first thought you’ve found love? How it ended in premium tears and late-night wailing? I thought after that you were going to quit loving and put your heart on lock and key but no, you didn’t.

You gave love a second and third chance and it did nothing but send you to the edge of your bed curled up with a blanket over your head at night wondering what you did to deserve such a pain amidst hot tears.

I wish I could tell you to drop the 2 am phone call and go to sleep because that boy is going to shatter your heart and you will wish you slept on these nights but “you get coconut head” you wouldn’t listen to me. All the constant waiting for him to text or call will not happen because he will choose someone else over you and tell you “I love you but just as a friend”. 

You’ll cry your heart out until you can no longer feel your face but you’re going to be fine because you’re strong and that has helped me a lot in keeping my head up today.

A lot of things would appear like a tornado across your heart but it will not break you or stop you from seeing the importance of giving your heart and your all into loving and caring about people. 

These heartbreaks will not be a sip of juice for you, words like “I love you but you will never be what I want” or “Tutu, you are perfect but not for me” will be stuck in your head for a while and it will at some point limit you and make you see yourself less. 

Thanks to all of these I will get to learn more and more about myself, about people's individuality and relations with a chameleon(People’s color change). 

I will get to learn from you what I want my next relationship to be like and also what I want out of life and relationships.

Somehow, You will learn that love is not the only thing you need to be a part of anyone’s life and that life in its wholeness is not about love and sex. 

Relationships and commitment need more than just love to survive.

The love you long for will find you when the time is right. Relax.

I know you revealed your weakness and you have been exploited and used because you think that’s what love is about.

Sorry to disappoint you, healthy love fully complements your weakness. 

I hope with this you get to figure out the difference between manipulation and love. There’s a very thin line in between these two which you’re currently blinded to. 

You’ll learn the difference but I just need you to know that a lot will happen so you can open your eyes to this. Manipulation will have you losing yourself. Love will help you to discover yourself so much more. Figuring out these differences will awaken you.

You’ve made a lot of mistakes when it comes to choosing yourself because you constantly put a lot of people before you which is underserving. You belittled yourself to fit into people’s perfect description, shrinking yourself and your motives because you wanted to be that cool kid. 

You’ll comprehend the reasons why you should suit yourself and do what you deem fit as soon as placing other people before you will have you trampled on.

“Take a bullet for someone and watch them babble about how your blood splashed on their favorite shirt”

There will come that time when you will laugh at everything that hurt you, turn your pain into jokes during the daytime, and cry yourself to sleep during the nighttime. The muffled sobs inside the pillow so no one would hear how much you are hurt. It will be an emotional rollercoaster for you. 

You’ll manage to forge ahead all of these and find a better you which, like the ingredient in making a soup, will be a spice in making me.

I have so many things I want to give you heads up about but you will probably still make the mistake, which is a necessity in self-discovery. 

You will somehow let go of your old friends not because they have done you wrong but because just like shoes, you’ll outgrow them.

“Twenty kids cannot play for twenty years”

You will make new amazing friends who will stick by you for a long time and cheer you up now and then and you will also make the wrong friends that will unconsciously help you set some boundaries for yourself and me.

I would have said do not pick medicine and surgery as your course of study but you will be deluded with the idea that you have fallen in love with the profession so I’m stuck here with that. Your choice is going to make you have a lot of sleepless nights and you’re going to contemplate this single decision a lot.

I know navigating through life might be a little difficult right now especially with all the insecurities you’re starting to have about your skin color and your eyesight but I can assure you it will pass and you’ll laugh again.

You’ll realize that what you wish you have is what someone else wants to let go of. Ironically, what you hate about yourself, someone in a distance loathes you for it. You will grow to find comfort in your skin and peace with your glasses and your contacts. 

I also want to let you know, don’t be scared to set your standards for life and enjoy being yourself amidst your flaw because honestly no one has it all and everyone has a shortcoming they are trying to work towards straightening out so live, love, and laugh. 

You’ll live today and never get to live it again so why gamble with your happiness trying to fit in?

You will be quite judgy for a while before you realize the hard way not to judge anyone because as unintentional as it sounds, people are going through a lot and you never know the circumstance surrounding why they’re what they are. Sometimes there might be no circumstance but then,

“Who are you to put a tape on anyone?!”

Penultimately, I see how you look at people on social media and want to be like them. You feel you’ve not done enough for yourself and you’re triggered by everything you see on the internet. 

Your mental health is at stake. 

You’ll soon be filled with this here’s and there’s till you’re pushed to the edge. You’ll learn that social media is not real life and the tension you feel from people on there don’t even exist. You really will learn to stop with the comparison and do you. You’ll learn to enjoy your life off your socials.

In conclusion, I want you to know that writing this to you doesn’t mean I’m perfect. 

To be honest, perfection is a non-existent illusion. 

So don’t beat yourself up for not being perfect. To everything you go through in life, I hope you find peace with it and with yourself and you never let any of the things weigh you down. 

You’ll learn, you’ll love but above all, you’ll discover the sides of you that you never knew existed and that is going to be me. I’m working on getting better too so I get to write another letter soon. 

But to the flawful you and the endless mistakes,

Cheers.”