The weather’s doing that thing where it changes again, leaving that comfy space of cold weather, fluffy jackets, and stealing your friend’s beanies to a now warm haze that makes you feel hot and tired. It’s the year 2023, a year we thought we’d never make it to. Somehow I feel nervous writing this letter to you, future me. Is your hair auburn or green? Perhaps a Lilac mixed with blues from the sea. Though that does not scare me. What scares me most is that this letter will be like the letter 14 year old us wrote. She had a two year plan. She wrote a letter to 16 year old us that only got lost somewhere between here and there under a mountain of notebooks, only to be read by 18 year old us flying across the country to move out on our own. Not because we wanted to, but because we had to. Do you remember how hard we cried reading that letter, the realization of the dreams we once had that were shattered? The realization of how long it had been that bad? The realization that our plan took quite a bit longer and we still haven’t checked all the boxes from the hopes of a 14 year old version of us? I hope this letter is different. I hope you have found peace in some manner or another, though even that seems like a leap in hope. I think I just hope you’re happy as I’m sitting in our 2013 Honda civic at a park we’ve never been to. Frustrated and irritated I have to go back to school tomorrow. I’m upset that I’m so upset it’s like an endless circle and the root cause feels like that root cause has its own root cause. It feels as if there’s no end, like I’m a rat stuck in a maze. Cement walls filled like a zoo, also named school. I miss the things we used to do, smuggle betta fish internationally, speak at conferences to hundreds, and travel all over the world. I miss being happy consistently, I miss being proud of myself. Though now I feel I’ve withered into something small, circled in a box to follow the rat race. I feel like nothing. I just hope you’re happy and I hope you remember me as the girl who tried her best no matter where it took her. I love you.