A Letter to Myself
I am fifteen. And two months from now, in the quiet inevitability of 2025, I will be sixteen. Forgive me, my dear, for writing so late—a letter trailing behind the new year’s quiet, cunning entrance as if time itself had slipped through the door before I could catch its sleeve. But time does that, doesn’t it? It moves without waiting, without pausing to ask if we are ready.
Your tears—they are not merely sorrow distilled but crystals, shimmering with a language of their own, more luminous than the lonesome half-moon that lingers behind a veil of cloud. You must learn to set them down, to unclench your fingers, especially in the hours after the sun has departed, when the weight in your chest climbs higher, presses deeper, until your lungs feel lined with stone. Breathe. Inhale the thin, fragile air of this world and surrender to its beauty—fleeting, untouchable, but here. Why let the mind unravel itself into the mist of what is to come? Why chase the formless unease that knots itself inside you? Your soul is always slipping ahead, impatient, restless, while your body lingers behind, caught in the tidepool of its own longing.
Oh, restless soul, why grasp at what has yet to be? Why not rest in the golden hush of now, or let the dark, rich earth cradle your fire? Outside, the snow falls—not the snow of childhood, when it was spellwork, enchantment, a world made soft and new—but another kind of snow. A mist now, a shroud, a silent veil that pulls you into battles fought in solitude. You wish to go back, don’t you? To the time of warm embraces, of hands that held yours without question, of butterflies drifting free in the sunlight. But time, unfeeling, unstoppable, carries us forward, not back. We march onward, half-blind, into a future that glows and dims, twists and turns, luminous yet uncertain—like marionettes moving to a rhythm we did not compose.
They say fifteen is an age of mist, an age of standing at the threshold, neither child nor grown, neither here nor there. But if fifteen is mist, then what is sixteen? I cannot say. Only this: you must learn to be present, to be happy in the quiet, in the becoming. You do not always have to be the red rose upon the mountain, bold and burning against the wind. You could be the dandelions by the sea, gentle and unguarded, swaying with the tide, accompanied only by the willow, the wind, and the mantra in your mind––if you want to be happy, be.
I wish you a year of safety, health, nourishment, transformation, and quiet joy. Not the best year—for I do not wish for the brilliance that fades—but a year that carries you forward, gently, steadily, each moment a step toward the light you dream of. Let every year be better than the last, not in grandeur, but in the quiet certainty that you are growing, becoming, inching ever closer to the soul you are meant to be.