Dear Past Me,
A lot has happened since my initial letter. Compared to my great insecurity and worry stemming from my lack of direction, things have greatly improved. I’ve applied to grad school (that was a whole crazy story on its own), and received some acceptance letters! Not all of them have gotten back to me, but the fact that some of them have is really comforting. Life is still a bit uncertain, but there’s more of a plan now. I’m writing this letter sitting in a chill café with a dear friend that I’ve just met, and I can say that things did start to look up after your letter.
I just wanted to let you know that things paid off. All the worry, work, and the roller coaster of emotions that you went through was not in vain. You were lacking in motivation due to our major, and suffering major burnout. It took us long enough, but we finally accepted that and now we love IR (I’m not sure what IR is, maybe include the full name of it) and its prospects more than you can imagine. Our health still sucks, but we’ve made ways to lessen the pain and found a great support system here. You were constantly worried sick about the future and what to do, and felt incredibly lonely all the time. To be honest, that feeling still persisted for a while after you wrote your letter, but things did start to brighten up.
We met a ton of new people, and even got two jobs (not at the same time). We got a job a little after you wrote the letter, and we got another job offer during the summer. Since then, we’ve been meeting so many people. Some of them aren’t great, but most are really nice and supportive. We even met someone romantically (aw) , and things are starting to become wholesome. The future between the two of us is a bit uncertain as the future itself is unpredictable, but the memories we made with the person we’ve become is worthwhile. Your wish of exploring Windsor more came true, and we’ve since gone to a lot of new areas you’ve been curious to visit. We even went to Detroit a couple of times, and had a blast.However, the friends you were hanging out with at the time aren’t as active in our lives anymore. There wasn’t anything bad or sad about it;it was just a part of growing up. All of us got too busy to see each other as often as we used to, and some of us moved away from Windsor. It doesn’t mean that we have no contact with them at all, as they’re too precious to leave. Overall, our social life has become a social life.
We don’t call home as often as we used to, and it’s both good and bad. We miss our family and they miss us too, but the distance is also great for character development. We’re starting to unlearn our bad and toxic habits. It’s still a work in progress, but having our own independence has helped with this progress. I guess distance makes the heart fonder. Unfortunately, our grandfather won’t attend our graduation but he promised to be there when we’re done with graduate studies. That topic is a whole other topic that’s still very confusing, but hopefully future us powers through. At least we now know that graduate school is not a maybe, but a certainty in our future. When and where is still up for debate, but things are going more smoothly than expected.
Graduation is about a month away, and it still feels surreal. I think only Mom is attending, and I’m glad that at least one person is able to make it. She’s waiting on her VISA approval, and she gets it in time to come. You’ve made some friends who are graduating at the same time too. I learned that we graduate in sections because of the sheer amount of people graduating, but you’ll probably see them one way or another. The current worry is that we might be homeless after graduation because we don’t know where we’re heading, but fingers crossed that it goes well.
All I can say for certain is that things have changed for the better since you wrote. We’ve experienced a lot, and we’ve grown as people. The fear we had about our life being stagnant and boring turned out to just be unnecessary worries, since we managed okay. No, we’re not partying and going out all the time like in the movies, but we’ve never been that kind of person to begin with. If anything, we’ve learned that what others see as a great college experience doesn’t always align with us. Sticking to our values while slowly getting out of our comfort zone worked well, and staying true to ourselves is something that I’m proud of us for accomplishing . Things are going to rapidly change after this, but we’re never alone during any step of the way.
P.S We also did get a tattoo! Looks sick as hell and we love it
Love,
Present Me