Past Me: Still crackberryin’
FutureMe is a website for narcissists who know that in the future they’ll need some comfort from the past. I am unfailingly one of these people. The site allows you to write an e-mail to your future self, and they’ll send it to you on the date that you specify.
I apparently wrote an e-mail to myself on May 13, 2009 (the end of my junior year at NYU), and just received it today. It read:
Dear FutureMe,
I’ll be graduating in May 2010, so the nostalgia and uneasiness I feel now while sending this e-mail (in May 2009) will be far more warranted when I receive it. I know you are scared, FutureMe. I know the world is a weird, terrifying, sad place, but you should hold dear to you the prevailing good of all things. By May 2010 you will have hopefully made it through NYU happily and successfully with an impressive GPA. You will have hopefully made and kept the dearest of friends. You will have hopefully accomplished much as a journalist and new media diehard, braving your way into a well-paid and respected career, despite the industry’s financial woes. You will hopefully be in love with someone who treats you well and loves you back. Your family will hopefully remain complete, loving and proud of you. You will have hopefully curtailed the symptoms of OCD that required you write all these things in this message.
Always remember that, though sometimes you are so permeable that you allow too easily the negative thoughts of others to force you to think otherwise, you are and always will be beautiful, intelligent and kind. You are a good person at your core, FutureMe, and I hope that you will remain that way long after you receive this e-mail.
Love,
Present Me
It’s really funny how Past Me talks to Future Me like Future Me needs some philosophical, world-ending advice. Future Me is now Present Me, and I had to laugh when I read this e-mail. Why didn’t I just write something like, “It’ll be okay, lady” and press Send? Am I really that self-serious? (The answer is yes. Always yes.)
“You are and always will be beautiful, intelligent and kind.” I think Past Me had a maaaad crush on Future Me.
I’ll admit, though, it was kind of cool to receive the e-mail this morning. It was definitely the nicest e-mail I’ve received in the past few weeks, which I guess is kind of sad? I don’t know. The whole thing reminds me of the fact that I’m wearing a bracelet my Mom bought me in Hawaii that is supposed to “ward off sadness.” It’s easy to buy into things like that when OCD makes you superstitious, or when you’re feeling especially vulnerable.
It also reminds me of this really stupid phrase I have written on the wipe board on my bedroom door. When we were first dating, around my 22nd birthday, my ex had written “Happy birthday! From, a boy who likes you” on it. The night he broke up with me I went home for a few days and my roommate David went into my room and cleaned out all of the obvious traces of him before I could see them when I got home. David threw away the flowers my ex had bought me that sat wilting on my bookshelf, the t-shirt emblazoned with the Firefox logo he had brought me back from San Francisco, and erased that message from my wipe board. When I got back from Philadelphia, I threw away all of the little gifts he bought me: the books, the toys from the comic shop, the tea mug, the bath salts. I threw away everything except the Anthropologie dress he bought me for my birthday. That shit is too cute to get rid of over a stupid boy. On the wipe board I wrote, “Today will be a good day because you are STRONG,” because aphorisms like that belie my Eat Pray Love undertone but also seem really important when you’re going through a breakup.
Learning to be whole, to not rely on anyone else for your own emotional well being, is probably the hardest thing humans are tasked with accomplishing. Most people never achieve it, hence the unhealthy, dependent relationships that seem to prevail in our modern world. It’s something I strive for more and more every day, and so a little morsel of self-comfort from the past, no matter how silly or stupid or emo it may have been, was quite welcome this morning.
The best part is that I accomplished every single thing in that e-mail! Except for the being in love part. So yeah, thanks for that, Past Me.