To My Younger Self
and letters to a young [wanna-be] poet
Hi! I am aware I’ve been posting on Monday the past few weeks — I have been so lucky to be so busy that weekends just make me want to sleep. So many people to see! So many things to do! I can’t believe I’ve already been here for nearly a month. Part of me was worried that it wouldn’t feel as much like home after being away, but it feels like it more than ever. I’ve been spending time seeing family and friends, new and old. Sometimes I am very tired and have barista stains on many of my shirts, but I am so grateful to be here, sweating in this wet Virginia heat.
My little sister graduated high school this past weekend, and yesterday was my youngest sister’s fifteenth birthday. Among all these celebrations and the reunions, I often catch myself in a nostalgic daze, reminiscing on all that’s changed. The last time I sat in my high school’s auditorium was for my own graduation, thinking thank god i’m getting out of here and then walking into the world with my head up high, like I was trying to swim in an ocean without getting my hair wet. But as reality always is, you don’t get over the shock of the cold until you dunk your head in. The last four years have been a slow and gruelling reminder that I did not, shockingly, have all the answers. My 18-year-old journal is full of things like I AM ROTTING IN VIRGINIA and ends with a quote by Anais Nin written in bright red marker: “I’m restless. Things are calling me away. My hair is being pulled by the stars again”. I wonder how that self would feel knowing that I don’t plan on living in London forever anymore, that the friend I thought was my ride or die hasn’t spoken to me in two years, that I’ve changed career paths. Maybe she’d be pissed at me, walk out of the room yelling God, you ruined everything. I’d forgive her for it. I hope she’d forgive me too.
When I left high school, my favorite English teacher told me to buy a copy of Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. I did, but I didn’t read it until last year, thinking that my life wasn’t worthy of poetry until I got out of my hometown and “lived”. But what is living, if not just paying attention? The stars always had their grip on my hair, but I didn’t notice the blades of grass that tried to loop around my shoelaces. I felt a new life start when I let them.
Rilke writes:
Don’t write love poems; avoid at first those forms which are too familiar and habitual: they are the hardest, for you need great maturity and strength to produce something of your own in a domain where good and sometimes brilliant examples have been handed down to us in abundance. For this reason, flee general subjects and take refuge in those offered by your own day-to-day life; depict your sadnesses and desires, passing thoughts and faith in some kind of beauty – depict all this with intense, quiet, humble sincerity and make use of whatever you find about you to express yourself, the images from your dreams and the things in your memory.
I finally replaced my driver’s license last week. When I got my permit, nobody told me that the photo I took would also be my license photo, which would represent me until I got my horizontal over-21 card. In it, I am baby-faced, slightly terrified, with a fluffy bob and bangs that my sisters still make fun of. I spent seven years carrying around a pocket-sized version of my 15-year-old self, and replacing her feels a lot more symbolic than it probably should be, as if tucking this small plastic card in my bedside drawer will make that version of me disappear forever.
As much as I wish I could will every blunt-banged, coconut-head photo of me away from this earth, I know she’ll always exist, somewhere. I wish I could tell her that it was okay to write through emotion, to be embarrassed, to put aside the longing and escapism for once and attempt to process everything she had — all the things that would inevitably come and go in waves, until everything stabalised in a fit of acceptance. And that acceptance was a way of forgiving every single silly, embarrassing, emotional version of myself that I shut away in my journals and shoved under my bed.
Rilke continues:
If your everyday life seems to lack material, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to summon up its riches, for there is no lack for him who creates and no poor, trivial place. And even if you were in a prison whose walls did not let any of the sounds of the world outside reach your senses - would you not have your childhood still, this marvellous, lavish source, this treasure-house of memories? Turn your attention towards that.
My younger sister is about to turn eighteen, and her high school experience was far different than mine — a pandemic, TikTok, no crazy haircuts — but I can only hope her next four years provide her with the same humbling growth. For my youngest sister, who is currently the age I was in my ex-license photo, I hope the same. We don’t talk much about feelings, and they aren’t readers, but I’ll always silently wish for them to find their own Letters to a Young Poet, their own way of grounded expression that will make them feel like the best version of themselves (also, that they know they can always call me).
Further Reading
“More Notes on Survival” by Nikita Gill: “because in the book of being, / life is promised to be a moving thing.”
“The Desired Change Will Occur” by Bill Carty: “There are times it seems we / only know each other by a thread— / but we love that thread.”
“Joy” by Thomas Centolella: “or you come back to learn / how half alive you’ve been,”
What I Enjoyed This Week
Recent Reads
Book Lovers by Emily Henry. She strikes again! I decided I needed a silly little rom-com this week, and this didn’t dissapoint. Funnily enough, it was a lot about sister dynamics, and I loved that. Emily Henry does a fantastic job at balancing feel-good fluff with meaningful plot, and makes you laugh a lot along the way. I’ll read anything she writes, probably.
“June” by Alex Dimitrov. Last summer my best friend and I spent a few days in New York in June, and the city had a glow to it that I had not yet experienced. I have yet to experience summer in London, but I imagine it will be similar: like the city itself has a body, and like you are alive in it. because at last, for one summer / the only difficulty I’m willing to imagine / is walking through this first humid day / with my hands full, not at all peaceful / but entirely possible and real.
Other Wonderful Things
I saw the incredible Phoebe Bridgers perform at The Anthem on Saturday. I would not have made it through the depths of the pandemic if not for her album Punisher. I listened to it on the way to my 5:15 work shifts, while crying in parking lots, as I got ready for my virtual 4 AM French classes. It was a way for me to externalize feelings that I was too tired to write about. To experience those songs live was a full-circle moment, a feeling I can’t really put into words. I am grateful to have gone with my best friend, with whom eighteen months ago I sat, both of us masked and teary, in a Starbucks parking lot listening to her albums. I feel a little bit better rounded now. She was phenomenal, and the buildup to the “I Know The End” outro was everything I imagined it would be and more.
My local gelato place has a cardemom flavor. I paired it with their halvah and pistachio, and it tasted a little bit like home.
Thank you for reading, as always, and for your patience.
<3
Tara
i'm happy to hear you're busy, in the best way possible! and gosh, what a tender way to look back, you look at yourself with a lot of compassion, we need more of that :)
and aaaaah you've read book lovers as well? i also really feel like emily tackles so many issues that feel relatable, or at the very least she gives them a twist that feels very genuine. i loved it in people we meet on vacation and also enjoyed it a lot in her most recent work. i'd probably read a menu if she wrote it....