Dear me,

You loved the idea of him taking you on a proper date, which turned out to be at a regular pub. There, he explained his views on wars and forgot to ask you what it was actually like living in conflict-ridden places in the world.

Afterwards you held hands walking to your house, stopping when there was a wall so you could passionately kiss. He showed you romantic gestures and you did everything – your hair, makeup, funny jokes, the sharing of deep thoughts.

You did not feel better than him. It was the opposite. You accepted everything about him without judgment. Finally, he asked you if you could be his friend with benefits. You are allowed to be his girlfriend on holidays only, he said. That moment came just after he said he’d seen your medicine cabinet and he’d said it was no issue at all.

It was strange. He knew you wanted a serious relationship. After the medicine incident, he stopped speaking to you. It isn’t ‘bad’ to have medication against sadness, though. Isn’t the acknowledgement of being sad sometimes the first step toward finding power in yourself?

Was he the one struggling? You didn’t speak to him about your family dynamics, because you could sense he dreamt of a better match. You were also careful not to speak about your good job, so that you didn’t make yourself appear better in any way. You listened to the stories about the pranks he played on his boss and how popular he was. Listening intently doesn’t make you a doormat, by the way. You are just very kind.

On New Year’s, he texted you again that he was thinking of you because he ran past your house by coincidence. He didn’t say he simply missed you or anything conveying his emotions. That second time, you broke up with him.

One thing is certain – you know yourself well. You spent a year reading up on your personality traits and philosophical wisdom. You laughed as the book you looked at with him – titled ‘How to deal with difficult people’ – later gave you the answers as to why you could never be the one for him.

A crab with an exoskeleton. You have a big heart even if you hide it behind rational analysis. You quote stoic philosophers while crafting art that laid bare the vulnerabilities of your being. You write about things that need to be said, about the day you were caught in a conflict in Beirut, but also the thoughts your brain makes as it overthinks and overthinks.

Is overthinking a sign of weakness? Not if it helps you put things in perspective. You start with the worst-case scenario and find reasons why those will not happen. If it does, what you will do to mitigate it. You move through every single scenario, in effect branching every possibility. Until all that is left in your mind is the path to leading a hopeful life. That is a positive way of living.

Pure honesty helps you navigate a life led by this overanalytical mind, with a heart that can’t be silenced. You go on a trip on a boat and notice the difficulties the crew hailing from the other side of the globe are having. You want nothing more but to help them, so you offer them advice where others may have simply said “I don’t know” and walked on.

You know how to speak your mind while living in a society where good manners are often more important than anything.

But it is your emotional honesty that allows you to be strong and live a good life in the present moment. I am proud of how you stuck to your dream of wanting to be with someone who would want to commit to you fully. There is a time for Netflix n Chill, and a time to wake up and chase your dreams.

Sincerely,

me.

You were the kind of girl who explained memes with full etymology and citations. Who won the spelling bee and had to hide in the bathroom from the shame of it.

You hated it. Because nerdy wasn’t hot. Hot was effortless. Hot was chaotic eyeliner and being sarcastic-funny while pretending not to care and saying things like “I hate reading” while wearing a crop top.

You didn’t have that. So you made it up. At 3am in a cursed google doc, you invented characters who were everything you weren’t. Sanded them smooth, gave them tragic pasts and tattoos and all.

And then at parties where you knew no one, you introduced yourself as them. Not because you were cool. Because you were anything but. Because you were terrified someone might meet the *real* you and leave.

So you lied first. Stayed two steps ahead. (Prepped for that too, you did. Memorized fake backstories the way other people studied for finals. Which, to be fair, you also did.)

Once you were Lucia, the philosophy student from Melbourne with an accent you put together from a half-watched TikTok and the help of many a drink. You quoted Foucault and completely mispronounced it, but said it with such conviction no one dared correct you. A finance bro joke-proposed to you on a rooftop with a vodka soda. You giggled and said, “I don’t believe in marriage,” but actually went home and googled “can people tell if you’re faking an accent?”

Then there was Jackie, who worked at McDonald’s by day and “raced bikes with the boys” at night. You once told a guy you had a scar from laying down your motorcycle at 60 mph. You actually got it tripping over your mom’s friend’s cat.

Alyssa was an indie film actress. You said you’d just wrapped a short about a woman grieving something she can’t name. (She can’t name it because you never wrote the script.) You cried on cue at a bonfire to sell it. You practiced for weeks in the mirror. Someone told you you had “Juliette Binoche energy.” You nodded solemnly, then later frantically searched: Juliette Binoche… who??

And then there was Kayla, the mysterious one who never offered details. She wore boots that hurt and answered questions with riddles.

“What do you do?”
“I disappear.”

“What does that even mean?”
“You tell me.”

Kayla got offered free weed and two internships. You left with neither and got lost on the subway home.

People think nerds can’t lie well. And usually, they’re kinda right. But you weren’t lying to impress, you were lying to escape. To try on a different kind of power, see what it might feel like to be looked at like you belonged, like you mattered.

And you did pull it off. Kind of. For a few minutes, a few hours, maybe a whole night. But they never stayed, because even in costume, *you* didn’t believe you were worth knowing.

The irony, of course, is that the real you, the one writing bad poetry at 2am, annotating books like love letters, falling in love with anyone who said “ubiquitous,” was always the most interesting one in the room.

You just hadn’t met people who spoke your language yet. But you would.
You stopped lying eventually. Not because you got caught (you definitely did, and more than once) but because you got tired. Tired of playing dress-up. Tired of disappearing. Tired of watching someone else get credit for your spark.

Now when someone asks what you do, you say, without shame, “I’m a software engineer. And sometimes I write.” No accent, no character sheet, nothing.
Sometimes people look bored when you say it. But sometimes they stay anyway.

Which, I think, means you won.

Style score: 73%

Dear Kayleigh,

To start, you need to know that family isn’t who you are related to but to the family you chose. You will realize this and it will become a game changer.

You don’t know your biological Father and you will never meet him. You found out about him at 13 and it’s going to be a lot. So many questions and feelings will come from it. He will send you a letter on your 18th birthday. It will be full of grammar mistakes that make you cringe, and confusing excuses for his absence. And it will only give you an ugly seed of doubt.

Was I not good enough for him to stick around?

Suddenly all those years so far that sum up who you are as a person will feel unimportant. You’ll question why he left and if your blood relation keeps him up at night. If he looks at his family and sees you or if he would be proud of the young woman you are. You’ll go over every what-if, and wonder why such an effortless letter was even sent.

But please understand that he would have been a Father and not a Dad. Your Dad is the man who raised you and showed you why a daughter needs a Dad. Showed up to every choir concert cheering and giving you everything you needed. A Dad shows up. A Father does not. You will always be enough to your Dad and he will hug you when you get this letter and question your worth as a person. Wipe your tears away and comfort you. Tell you that he is the luckiest Dad in the world. Your Father missed out. And you got an amazing Dad. You are enough to him.

Dear Me,

We didn’t meet in a coffee shop.
There was no collision in a cinematic twist of time.
To be honest, I think of you often. You are like a shadow flittering about in the corner of my best days, trying to separate yourself from my being. You’re still there, always there, your shoulders tense, jaw tight, eyes scanning for something to prove.

You were always trying. God, you were always trying. Too much. Too often. Always too much.
You wanted to be everything. For everyone. All the time.

You wished you were smarter, faster, stronger. You wanted to be the sister they could be proud of. Watching two little sisters in the yard with a heart full of love and a brain swelling with guilt, thinking, I should be better. I should be there more. I should just do better.

You thought if you could just push harder, at school, at practice, at work, in every hallway of your life, that you’d earn the peace you thought other people were born with.

You thought being enough meant doing more. Lift heavier in the gym. More decisions you made. More medals, more ranks, more pages filled, more tears swallowed.

And then somewhere along the way, you grew up. You became me.

Not in the loud, obvious way. But quietly. The type that comes from stretching out your legs and realizing they don’t shake anymore. Or standing in the place you once imagined and realizing you’ve made it. Like watching your sisters become strong, kind women. Not because you weren’t perfect, but because you loved them so much that even your self doubt looked like strength to them.

You ended up exactly where you were meant to be. Where you needed to be. Where I am. Not because you outran your flaws, but because you learned to live with them. You learned that being a better leader wasn’t about barking louder, it was about listening more. You learned that being stronger wasn’t about lifting more weight, it was about not collapsing when the emotional weight got heavy.

You learned that school, and work, and performance mattered.
Not at the expense of people though.
Not more than purpose.

You fell in love with the things that last. You stopped- I stopped- no, WE stopped letting the ghosts of “not enough” speak louder than our own voice.

If I could reach back to you, back to the tired, overachieving, aching, beautiful version of you, I’d tell you this:
The version of you I am now isn’t flawless.
But she’s free.
You don’t need to keep running.
You are not behind.
You are not late.
You have arrived, and right on time, a perfect entrance.
And you are more than enough.
We have learned that WE are more than enough.

Love,
Me, you, us.
The one who finally forgave the both of us.

This letter is for the boy in me who wanted to be good enough.
I hear you.
I see you.
I still carry you with me.
This is what I’ve learned.

There are moments I’m not proud of: I snap at my daughters for being children. I miss what my wife is really saying, my ego fogging the air between us. I listen to students’ heartfelt confessions and find myself without a way to respond.

Often in the aftermath of these moments, I tell myself, “You should be more. You should be better. You are not enough.”

While I believe these, the great irony is–I continue to convince myself the opposite is true also.

That I am too much.

When I pour my heart out on the page. When I sing at the top of my lungs. When I perform poetry in place of giving a standard order professional presentation.

In preparing to write this letter, I realized that I can’t write to a past version of myself, for these voices still linger; they are present and prevalent still.

And you know what else I realized?

Both of these feelings are two sides of the same counterfeit coin that I keep trying to spend.

I catch myself, too often, trying to deposit these lies into the accounts of my self-worth. I still invest in these illusions. But I’m working to close out that account. To live in the security of truth, not the debt of self-doubt.

It doesn’t come free of charge, to stop paying interest on shame. It takes courage to step away from these stories I’ve both bought and sold–to say: “No more.”

It’s a constant practice—refreshing, reminding, and reimagining—just to put my money where my mouth is, if even for a fleeting moment. Resilience is not found in having it all together. It lives in returning, again and again, to the truth that held you, even when you lost sight of it.

What follows is my reminder: love is the only transaction that transforms us.

I write these lines below for me and everybody else out there consumed by self-sabotage. A bank statement for when we buy into the false narrative of our own definitions.

No more fake news.

Only good news.

So, here’s my memo of our up to date and true credit score:

The screen displays a well-worn message:
Insufficient funds.

And no matter how hard you try,
So long as you keep coming back to this ATM,
You will always get the same message.

If you measure yourself against your potential,
You will focus on your shadow,
Which does nothing but grow as you gaze upon it.
When you allow others to measure your worth,
The numbers won’t add up.
You are not made to fit someone’s bottom line.

Rather,
It’s time to find a new credit union.
No more dealings with shadow bankers of no faith.

Choose the bank that encourages you to
Embrace the brilliant sunshine within.

You are cosmic wonder.
You are the only you in this endless vast universe.
You are loved—
Just as you are.

You can stop the endless spending.
Withdraw from the questions rapid firing through your mind.
Invest in this sacred place
This garden of tranquility
This calm
This balm
This knowledge of your beauty and worth.

You are a human being.
And this means you are meant to dance
Between brilliance and buffoonery.
A mix of
Majesty and mess,
Embodiment and ethereality,
Beauty and blemish,
Bounty and bankruptcy.

Temptation will ask you to label these contradictions as a diminishment of divinity,
As if you have the power to distort something so pure.

It is only in thinking we have this power that we overdraft our account.

It is in taking our own delusional definitions to mean more
Than the breath we share
The dignity which breathes in all
The divine spark that flickers amidst and even despite our forgetfulness.

For after all,
Have you heard of the bank account that cannot be depleted?
Whose currency carries worth through every contradiction?
What collateral secures the sanctity of your soul?

It’s what you were minted for.

It’s the only wealth that cannot be counterfeited.

It’s meant to be received without limit,
and spent without fear.

It’s love.

So, the next time voices—whether within or without—
Try to preach a Gospel of shortcomings,
Do not bow.
Do not bargain.

Let go of that counterfeit coin which never bought you peace anyway.

Letting go in this way is not weakness.
It is the fiercest kind of faith:
Believing you are already worthy
Without proof,
Without profit,
Without performance.

Take this to spend freely instead:
The truth of who you are,
Stamped with love,
Made in the image of enough—
Just as you are.