How do we forgive ourselves for all the things we did not become?
Doc Luben, 14 Lines from Love Letters or Suicide Notes
There’s this website called FutureMe that I’ve been pathetically obsessed with for years. It lets you send letters to your future self, and every time I read one from, say, six months ago, it leaves a heavy, suffocating feeling in my chest—guilt. Guilt for everything I promised myself I’d be but never became. Guilt for everything I swore I’d accomplish but forgot about within a week. It holds me accountable and reminds me to do better. And in many ways, I have. I finally broke a bad habit I swore I would two letters ago. I reconnected with a friend I’d hoped to make amends with four letters ago.
But there’s one thing I promised myself in my very first letter that I don’t think I’ll ever accomplish. I think about it every day. It sits in my chest like a stone I can’t swallow, clings to me like a second skin. A dull ache I’ve learned to live with.
When I was nine, I performed a monologue about the pressure of having family members push me towards becoming a doctor or an engineer. It opened with a faux phone call to my grandmother, who always urged me to go into medicine, followed by a long-winded rant about my family’s expectations of me. Maybe I only won first place because the judges saw a little girl on stage worrying about her future and felt a pang of sympathy. I often think about that monologue, and how certain I was of what I didn’t want to do. Then I think about where I ended up anyway.
What would younger me say?
In my first letter, I promised myself I’d choose a career that made me happy. For years, that meant becoming a journalist or an author. When I was told neither was financially stable, I turned to the idea of being a professor—only to be met with mockery and laughter. Now, I wake up every day to study computer science, dragging myself to classes for something I never truly wanted. It’s been a constant tug-of-war between passion and practicality, between the dreams I once had and the reality I had no choice but to accept.
That’s why I joined Her Campus. To hold onto at least one part of what once made me happy.
“Are you satisfied? I know you always wanted to become a writer. And I know it’s unfortunate that they forced you to take science. But no matter what, I hope you’re always happy and satisfied. I know it hurts. But you need to find a way to accept it and make peace with it. Let it make you happy. Even if you hate it now.“
– Aahana To Aahana, March 28th, 2023
This is what I said to myself two years ago. This was me on the path to making peace with it. I would have never said this four years ago, right before my 10th board exams, right before all the aptitude tests and career counselling sessions. My 16-year-old self would hate me if she saw me now.
Chasing passions v/s accepting reality
But I’ve matured since then. I realized I couldn’t just blindly accept the path I was pursuing, I had to make the most of it. I wanted to shape my future into something I could still enjoy. So I did my research. I searched for ways to make engineering tolerable, convincing myself that there had to be a way to bring writing into it, to create a space where my love for language could intersect with my degree. For example, I loved video games from a young age, the mechanics behind them and the story-telling, so maybe I could become a game developer. Or I could go into technical writing and become a UX writer. I could even become a digital humanities researcher, although that would lean more towards arts and humanities than technology. But in doing all this, I became so consumed with justifying my choices that I started focusing more on finding meaning in what I was doing rather than working towards the future I was meant to be preparing for. I agonized over it, night after night, crying myself to sleep at the mere thought of my future until my grades took a massive hit. But it’s all okay now. I made it to university. I’m studying computer science engineering. I’m doing better.
“Science still doesn’t make me happy. I still wake up dreading my future. But whatever.“
– Aahana To Aahana, September 28th, 2023, a reply to the previous letter from March
making peace with my choices
Going back to the Doc Luben quote at the beginning of this article, he discussed how we could ever forgive ourselves. But what does forgiveness even look like when it comes to lost dreams? And do I even need to exonerate myself? Maybe the bitterness of my ungranted absolution is fuel: if this is the path I ended up on, I might as well drag it to the finish line.
The truth is, I do have a knack for computer science. It just wasn’t my passion. But passion doesn’t always pay the bills (although I highly doubt engineering will, but that’s another conversation entirely), and in the end, I had to choose the safer option. But that doesn’t mean I’ve lost everything. I have other things, like writing for Her Campus or just for myself.
Anyway. The answer to Doc Luben’s question is simple. How do you forgive yourself? By enjoying what you did become. By making peace with it. By finding ways to make it yours. Maybe I won’t ever love computer science the way I love writing, but, with careful precision, I can carve out spaces for it within me. I can still write, even if it’s just for myself, even if it’s just here.
Maybe that’s what forgiveness really is—not letting go of what could’ve been, but learning to live with what is. And maybe, one day, I’ll wake up and realize I never needed to be forgiven at all.
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