One year, three years, five years from now I hope you look back on these days of work and winter and fixing up the house as golden. I hope you see the best moments of these years and forget the bad. Don't all things glow in nostalgia when we look back?
I hope you have grown in wisdom and aspiration, but mostly I hope you have grown in love. I hope that you still yearn for far away city lights, deserts, oceans and foreign horizons. That you spend your days doing what you love (because right now you haven't really found what that is yet). I hope there's still a part of you that feels invincible in youth; I still manage to feel so old and so young all at the same time. I wonder whether this goes, or if the same nineteen-year-old thought patterns bat around in your head once in a while.
I hope you do not think, at twenty two, I felt I knew it all. The longer I am here, the more I realise I don't know; and that is both terrifying and wonderful in equal measures. I hope I am getting there, albeit very slowly, like wisdom is only something we can truly hold once our minds are failing us in remembering the everyday things. Right now, I am happy in my not-knowing, and seek the years ahead with open arms. I hope when you read this again in the future, you will have it more together.
I hope you still long to hold the heavy weight of a child you haven't met yet. Or, as hard as my mind stretches to see, maybe you are reading this and you are already a mama. Please remember how much you hoped you would treasure these times (even though days may seem so hard) and please don't forget to take pictures. Take far, far too many. Even future you will be grateful later. I hope you keep a scrapbook or treasure chest in your new home, in your new life. Truthfully, I pray you are still writing.
I hope you lived abroad for those years you dreamt of. And that you not only explored famous landmarks, but hidden coffee shops and backstreet produce markets too. I hope you felt free, swam endless oceans and spent new year under sparking skies (it will make up for these past two, I promise). I hope you take care of what you put in your body - my cooking is still mediocre and late evenings mean freshly prepared dinners go scarce. I hope you get your dream of going part time- or even better, going it alone. Please know that even know, in the grapples of youth and materialism, family and food are the most important. I challenge you to think of more than a handful of 'important' material items from the time this was written. Even those NL Chelsea boots that just came in the post will age.
I hope you live by the water (and remember why this is so important; that we are 80% water and drawn so inherently to the current). I hope you have grown out of fears that still have this twenty-two year old staying at her boyfriends mum's whist he's away on business. I hope this, because as mama you are designed to be fearless (or at least built to show your little ones you are). I hope someone in the future has disproven any evidence of ghosts.
I hope the world still seems as kind and beautiful as it has ever been. I hope you remember that there is faith in humanity; that good people are mainly doing good in the absence of ego or recognition. Remember that, even while the world was at war, Anne Frank believed people really were good inside. And they are. It may not always look this way, but bad people make headlines, and when they do, remember to look for those who are helping. There are so so many more good people, and I hope you remember this: You just have to look hard enough.
I hope you keep safe all your photos and journals to show your grown up children one day. And maybe, in some distant time, when the century is closing and iPhones are obsolete, they too will keep their own journals to show their children.
It feels like time is so slow, and as days drag long as BAA at Amara, I stand locked in this moment: 21:11 on an idle Thursday night. But one day, without even realising, I will be looking back on my life wondering how it escaped through the gaps in my hands, as though I were trying to hold water. I hope you read this and smile (maybe at how young and naive You once were), but mostly, I hope you read this and remember a little deeper into one evening's mind.
Until we meet again, x
