A letter to a naïve little boy

Note: This is based on my on life, but i hope others would relate with it too. I hope it finds a way to someone who need to hear these things. So they will no they are not alone.

A Letter to a naïve little boy

“So, what should I do?” I asked my girlfriend.

“Maybe…you need to talk to your past self”

“What!” “Are you drunk?”

“No…I am not”

“So, I don’t understand. How do I talk to my past self?”

“Ummm… I think you should write a letter addressing your past self, write in it everything you wanted someone would have said to you when you were younger…” “Yeah… definitely do that”, she said gathering her stuff and doing a final touch-up.

“I will think about it…”

“No… you are going to write it. Promise me!” 

“But it’s stupid”

“People do stupid things to move on… it doesn’t matter” “And by the time you would finish it, maybe you would have come to terms with that you are not what you once were”

“Okay okay…. I promise”

“Okay bye…” she said and left for work.

“Bye”

So I decided I would write a letter, I mean what’s there to lose?

Hello, it’s me, I mean you from the future…

I know you are very angry and frustrated about life; you have no idea what to do in life. You have never known a stable path to walk on; you have just wandered all your life. I know you had traumas from your childhood, which still haunt you, and you have tried to bury them deep down inside you but sometimes they get triggered by the recent incidents and it gets very hard to keep your mind at peace. You never had anybody to confide in but you survived anyhow.

I just want to tell you that it will be just fine, that you will be just fine. Don’t worry too much, don’t think too much, just let life unfold at its own pace, and soon you will find happiness once again. I know you have seen Hollywood movies and you like how kids in those movies can share their feelings with their parents you wish you could do that too but you know you can’t. In India parents don’t care about how you feel, they care about what you can do. The mental health of kids is doomed in India; therapy is not even an option because as soon as you tell anyone, you are labeled as ‘Mentally unstable. 

You can live with almost anything if you want strong enough. Parents, friends, or anyone who doesn’t understand you is not your mistake and unfortunately, it’s not theirs either, I know you wanted it to be their mistake so you could blame them but sorry it’s not. They were just doing what they were taught to do, by their parents or respective. It’s a long chain of traumas that goes way back to where you can’t even put your finger at it. But you have learned a lot and you can break the chain, you just have to be brave enough and put the work into it. It’s not even India’s but the whole world’s problem, parents want their children to have wings but they won’t let them fly, because their parents didn’t let them. You have realized the fault in the system and you know how to correct it and you can.

Let me tell you because I know as I am you in the future that if you keep believing in yourself and kept going, learning from the mistakes you made. You will do just fine. I can’t tell you if have broken the chain of abuse and childhood traumas because that could change the course of your actions and that will lead to different outcomes but I could ensure you that you will live at least as far as I have come now in life, I can say that and I am sure if you keep things like as they are you will probably have a long and fulfilling life. I know you would be thinking that 

it could not be possible as it feels impossible to you according to your current circumstances but you will outlive them, I am living proof that you did.

You would have been diagnosed with OCD by now, as I recall. It’s an outcome of your frequent abuses and you can’t change it but you will be fine. I want to tell you to do what your heart says and believe in your intuitions as they will lead you where you want to go, just believe them. 

Finally, I can sum up everything I have said in saying that you will change and so will the circumstances, no matter how hard they might look or how impossible they feel. You think you won’t be able to heal all that happened and come to terms with it but you will. I have come to terms finally with myself and others and everything, I know now that it happened for a reason.

I have come to terms with 

that I am not the naïve little boy I was once, who believed in everyone and what they had to say. I have come to terms to believe in myself and so will you. You will not be who you are now, as I am not who I was once, that is change and change is constant. You probably won’t understand it now but you will in the meantime, just like Steve Jobs said: “You cannot connect the dots looking further, you can 

only connect them looking back”. Soon your dots will connect too, I won’t say that it will be wonderful and you will be 100% fine but then that doesn’t happen in real life. There will always be problems and worries that will trigger your past and remind you of your pain but you will be much more powerful than you were before and you will look right through the trauma eye to eye and tell it “Fuck off!”.

I just want to tell you. You will do well in life, and you will find purpose and love and everything you ever wished for, so for now, just keep living.

Yours truly

Future you, with love

“By the time I was finished I felt relief like I wrote in the letter I came to terms with the fact that the trauma changed me, I am not who I was once and that’s fine…”