I want to begin with something uncomfortable: I used to hate you.
You from a year ago. The person who sent messages that were too long to someone who no longer wanted to listen. The person who procrastinated until the deadline was near and then turned herself into the victim. The person who said "I'm okay" while clearly not being okay, then quietly blamed the whole world for not noticing.
The person who was jealous, impulsive, easily hurt, and very good at making everything bigger inside her head.
I used to want to delete you from my personal history the way I would delete a bad photo. Mentioning you made me wince. Thinking about a few things you said, a few decisions you made, made me want to disappear into the floor.
How could I be that foolish? How could I not see what is so obvious now?
But today, strangely, I want to say thank you.
Not because you were right. Many things you did were wrong. There is no need to decorate that. There were times you hurt me. There were times you bothered other people with your lack of calm. There were times you chose poorly because you were afraid of being lonely, left behind, or unrecognized.
But you are also the one who went through all of that so I could be here.
You lived with a very clumsy set of tools
I think what softens me toward you is realizing this: you were not trying to be terrible. You simply did not know a better way yet.
You reacted too strongly because you did not know how to name your emotions. You held onto certain people too tightly because you did not yet believe you could stand alone. You procrastinated because every beginning made you face the fear that you were not good enough. You talked too much when you were hurt because silence made you feel as if you were about to be abandoned.
Saying that does not erase responsibility. Wrong is still wrong. But understanding the reason makes me less eager to beat you with a moral whip.
A panicked person rarely makes beautiful decisions. A person who has not learned boundaries will either open the door too wide or slam it in someone's face. You lived with the tools you had then, and that toolbox was missing many things.
I remember nights when you lay staring at the ceiling, heart racing, wondering whether your life was breaking. You had no answer. You only had a phone almost out of battery, a pile of tangled thoughts, and the fact that you still had to get up the next morning.
Back then, I did not know that was also a kind of courage.
I used to see only your mistakes. Now I am beginning to see what you endured. You endured lessons that came roughly. Rejection. The realization that you were not as special as you thought. The shame after doing something unlike the person you wanted to become.
Without you, I would not have the boundaries I have today. Without you, I would not know that a message sent while hurting can break more than it heals. Without you, I would not understand that silence can be self-respect, while explaining too much can sometimes only be fear of losing face.
I do not want to reject you anymore
There is a fake kind of maturity: acting as if the old version of myself were a stupid stranger.
I often said "I was so childish back then" with a mocking tone, as if the present me were completely clean. But the truth is that I am built from those messy parts too. Rejecting you is like rejecting the foundation of a house because it has dirt on it.
I do not want to live like that anymore.
I want to look at you more directly. You were wrong, but you do not deserve to be hated forever. You were clumsy, but that clumsiness taught me to be softer with other people when they are also in a stage of not knowing yet. You did things that embarrassed me, but that embarrassment taught me humility. It pulled me down from the illusion that I am always clear-sighted.
Forgiving an old version of myself does not mean justifying everything. It only means I stop using disgust to manage memory. I can take responsibility, apologize if needed, change habits, set new boundaries, and still not turn the past into a whip I use on myself every night.
Thank you for not disappearing on the days everything was very dark. Thank you for making mistakes painful enough that I remember. Thank you for trying to act strong, even when that strength was sometimes sad and clumsy. Thank you for keeping me alive through a year you were not sure we would survive gracefully.
I do not promise that from now on I will become perfect. A year from now, my future self will probably look back at today and see that I was still naive in a few places. That is okay. I hope she will be kinder than I used to be to you.
If I could meet you in real life, I would not scold you anymore. I would pull out a chair, pour you a glass of water, and say: "Yes, I know. It hurt back then."
Then I would tell you that after all of it, I learned to live a little lighter. Not because you were always right. Because you were wrong, carried the consequences, and still gave me a chance to repair.
You used to be the version I wanted to hide. Today, I see you as the person who carried me across the bridge.
Thank you. I can keep going from here.