*From the perspective of future me looking back on today*
If there was ever a time that I look back on as remarkable, it was the last year of my undergrad; a year that was beautiful yet agonizing. I wish I could say it was just the beginning, those stories tend to be good ones. This was the end though, a period of time clouded by the fact that the life in front of me looked nothing like the life I had been living for 21 years, and I was scared. Not because of change—I love change—but because that life ahead of me wasn’t mine.
The thing is, I was never so sure of what my future would look like; it was all being laid out in front of me, and that’s a privilege so few have. This future was hopeful and full of love and right, but I didn’t deserve it. I really never felt like I deserved a future at all. The universe and I grappled a lot: she would give me gifts that sat in the corner of my room, because who was I to accept them? Their presence was excruciating, and I mourned the girl people saw in me that I couldn’t be for myself.
When I think about her, the girl crying because her boyfriend loves her too well and her family values her too much, I think about how she would never feel like a good person as long as she decided her worst moments would set the tone for the rest of her existence. She fully believed that her pain and fears would be as permanent as the skin she was in, the skin I’m in. There was this disconnect between how days fit into years, not the other way around, and in these days, moments. Millions of moments, and I know now that one of these moments is not enough to leave the day, weeks, years, in ruins. Drilling this into my head took some tough love, but any chance I got to love myself was one I had to take.
I wish she could see me now, wearing this shiny future she begrudgingly accepted, and it fits like a glove. I wake up and go to bed, day and night, fully understanding that this beautiful life of mine was meant for me. The funny thing is that I still have the same pains and the same fears that she had, the ones she was promised would some day go away; I lovingly call them my “moments.” The difference now is that I know they are just that: moments, a handful out of millions of moments, that fit into the days, the weeks, the years. The years ahead of me will not look like the ones that are behind me, and if each one is better than the next, it’s not some sick joke. It was made for me.Â
The girl I was in that fateful year has no idea that, whether she likes it or not, she was always meant to be happy. She’ll one day accept the gifts of the universe, because it loves her the same way she loves herself: sometimes with a jolt, and sometimes with an infinite contentment that makes her willing to live forever.