To a young Natalie,

It’s the fall of 2007 and you are about to start high school in a sea of unfamiliar faces. You are tired of living without words, submitting yourself to a cycle of anxiety and depression you don’t even know of yet, so you are set to change yourself in whatever way necessary to have the high school experience you grew up watching in movies and TV shows like Pretty in Pink and Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club and Saved by the Bell and Freaks and Geeks. You think you want a boyfriend and to be invited to parties, but you’re just looking for someone to love you for the person you can’t accept yourself to be yet.

You’ll be searching for that love that you need to give to yourself in others for years. But you never do, instead you always end up finding ways to cut deeper, fall harder because you truly believe you are the horrible person that that girl told you you were.

You’ve been telling yourself that the reason you’ve watched all of those Rihanna, Destiny’s Child, TLC, Shakira, J.Lo, etc. music videos over and over again is because you wanted to learn how to dance like them, be them, when you knew it was more that you wanted to be with them.

You’ll get into a relationship with a boy who you will hurt and who will hurt you tenfold and embroil yourself in high school bullshit that stabs you through the heart over and over again. But you’re convinced it was your fault, that everything is always your fault, so you let yourself bleed instead of patching yourself up.

You’ll go to a party with that boyfriend and rig the truth or dare game so that your girl friend next to you has to kiss you because you want to know what that’s like. And you think this is the only way you’ll be able to find out.

You’ll watch Glee and fall in love with Quinn. You’ll watch Xena and feel something so strong you don’t have words for it. You’ll watch Buffy and Charmed and catch yourself watching these fierce, beautiful women more than the men they fall in love with.

You’ll watch Mulan and question why it is you feel those words in “Reflection” ringing in your ears long after the movie has ended.

You’ll feel intimidated by the girls on the tennis team because they’re so beautiful, funny, and smart, and you are ugly and awkward and all you wanted to do was fit in, be accepted. Talk and swoon over boys with the fervor they did, but whenever you tried, it felt fake. And you knew it was only a matter of time before they figured out you were a fraud.

You’ll adopt a homophobic tongue because of how much you hate that you can’t stop the thoughts in your head and the dreams at night.

You’ll try to force yourself to do things and say things, act a certain way, in order to achieve what you think will alleviate yourself of these feelings.

You’ll go to church, try to believe in a god you long stopped believing in, and pray, every night, to let you feel something for this boy you and the rest of the world told you you had to love.

You’ll feel like you’re a disappointment, a mistake, for making your mother cry and break things.

You’ll feel ashamed of who you are and try to mask it through alcohol and drugs whenever you go to the Philippines.

You’ll try to tell people through what you write that you need help, that you are drowning, that you feel like this world, like everyone you’ve ever touched, will be better off without you. But you push them away when they get close to the truth because you’re scared that talking about this out loud will make it real.

It’s a long road ahead of you, little Nat, and I’m not going to lie and tell you that it’ll be easy. You’ll try to end things, punish yourself for being who you are, make yourself bleed, give away so much, have your soul broken a million times over, lose your own voice, and adopt a coat of guilt and shame you’re still struggling to shake off today.

But I see you, I do. And I wish I could go back and tell you that you will be okay. That after a darkness so suffocating your lungs nearly collapsed, they don’t and you make it out alive. You scrub the homophobia from your mouth and your mind. You embrace yourself and the scars on your body. You take steps towards caring for yourself and put up boundaries to keep safe. You learn to reclaim your own voice and begin to use the privilege you recognize you have to advocate for yourself and others.

You allow yourself to love a girl who opened your eyes to a world you didn’t know could be so beautiful. She will be your home, your family, and your partner. Her body is the greatest source of comfort you’ll ever know and her heart will teach you how to love through the most difficult of times. You will wake up unsure of how this dream has become reality and finally understand what it means to be alive.

Most importantly, though, you stop hurting yourself and instead try and see the beauty in the water’s reflection. You begin to love who you have grown up to be and feel that hole in your chest begin to close.

Love,

Natalie ‘17