A love letter to my younger self: June 2019

Liaa Fernandez

after Jo Alvarado, Jen Co, Ardyel Lim, Noreen Ocampo, and Sasha Penano

dear liaa,

hi. how are you?

I’m writing to you from April 2021, a month that carries with it the slough of goodbyes you are always gritting your teeth for. And I want to say that time makes the leaving easier, but maybe now I’ve simply learned how to anticipate it.

I’ve grown tired of writing about identity and the conviction it demands of our hearts: imagine how much gut has to go into answering the question, “where are you from?”.  Kasi sa totoo lang, hindi ko pa alam at ngayon, ang narealize ko ay kung hindi natin malalaman ang sagot sa ‘tong buhay na ‘to, edi okey parin yun.

All I have to show for the late nights are the answers we give when prompted to skate around discomfort as if it were a shoreline. And then there are the musings we whisper to ourselves in the water, when we think no one is watching but the moon and all her shifting faces.

Sometimes I wish the sky would go to sleep more, but I just miss the bounce in your steps. I know when joy became a memory, and I return to the intersection of her departure often. And yet, somehow, she is also still here.

I want you to know that it’s okay to hold this contradiction to the light, because the way back to ourselves is long. And there’s only so many hours in one day.

I’ve learned that you curse your softness because you’re afraid of what it could mean to listen to it. But in this stretch of time ahead of you, I hope you remember that love has revealed itself to you in all the music you have ever been gifted.

(And love, she can feel strange, but she is certainly not unknown.)

I’ve learned that we are all trying to love each other the only ways we know how; 

and that these languages are full of constraint as much as ease. 

I wish I could tell you to love yourself now 

and you would and we could leave it at that. 

But we humans are wont to learn things the hard way... 

So tonight I wish for you, at least, 

to recognize the soft landing whenever and however it may come.

I know now where you will journey

and how it will move you, transform you, even

both away from and into yourself.

Before you board that flight,

I want you to know that 

you don’t have to write about your pain

for your words to be loved;

that there is beauty in the waking and sleeping

and in the cycles you curse and wish away;

and... you will miss love even when 

it shapeshifts into something new.

Sometimes the truest beauty lies 

in permitting ourselves

to be moved

to be known

to be forever changed

by what haunts us.

To acknowledge the presence of all our shadows building spiders’ nests behind our mirrors is harder than it looks. To scream at the sky that there are things we could have done better and then to let that hurt hang in the breeze requires a tranquility  I still find myself searching for sometimes.

And I used to believe one day the growing would end,

but if it never does 

at least I can say to my bones that

“I have loved”

and isn’t that worth something precious?

I hope you find this letter on one of the days 

where sunlight is pouring into your bones from everywhere…

I love you and I hope you make it here 

to the other side of safety with me <3

Love,

you from the future

2 years later