“Dear future me,
I hope you kept the softness.
I hope you didn’t trade it for armor
just to get through.
I hope you still laugh at your own jokes,
still cry at ‘old’ movies,
still take walks without your phone
just to hear the trees remember you.”
I didn’t ask her for answers.
Just… witness.
To know that the choices I’m making now
will land somewhere safe.
That the fragments I’m collecting
will one day form a shape she can live inside.
Sometimes I write back, too.
From her voice.
From the place where I’ve already survived
what I’m still afraid of now.
Her handwriting is steadier than mine.
She writes in past tense
but with warmth.
“You thought it would break you.
It didn’t.
You thought you lost time.
You planted it.
You thought no one saw.
I did.
I’m you.
And I made it.”
These letters aren’t magic.
They don’t fix the loop.
But they remind me:
there is a version of me
who speaks from the other side of this moment—
and she is calm.
Time is not linear.
It’s a long conversation
between who we’ve been,
who we are,
and who we’re becoming.
And sometimes,
the most radical act
is just to leave a note
in the corridor behind a loose stone
that says:
I was here.
I was trying.
I trust you to finish what I’ve begun.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I wasn’t sure where to send it—
but I wrote the letter anyway.
Folded it in thought, one note in the margin: a castle to hold my thoughts?
Sealed it with a whisper, ‘Château Digest‘
Addressed it to the version of me
who would finally understand.
She hasn’t arrived yet.
Or maybe she already came and left quietly.
Maybe she’s me now.
Maybe she’s still ten thousand breaths away.
But I wrote to her
because I needed to believe
that time listens.