A Love Letter To Self, Burn After Reading

Honestly… I am not a liar. But, I am also, historically speaking, at times an unreliable narrator.

In my mind, reality and perception can exist separately: Loneliness is often a choice, not a sentence — failure a feeling, not a consequence — loveless, self-inflicted, never accurate.

What I thought a curse, a forecast once given coldly in a grey cement basement from an equally unreliable self-appointed mystic, really just a suggestion—a slick magazine horoscope, a symptom not the illness. Unknowingly choking back a placebo pill, not understanding it could never fix the pain. Seeing answers without the questions but telling them anyways.

And really, I wasn’t wrong. Back then, I was surviving…not hiding, growing…but not yet thriving. Still, as it turns out…the truth has always been worth eventually finding.

So Dear Self–

I’m so sorry for misleading, for reading fabrications aloud as history lessons, for calling doors walls and missing various well-marked exit signs. I’m so sorry for all the times I said “sorry” instead of “here’s what’s wrong,” for never telling you that I always do belong, for not answering screaming hunger pains, and for not always remembering to watch for the sun after it rains.

I am not a liar. But, I am also, at times, a blind artist accidentally painting blue oceans red. A cook without sense of taste, confusing spice with sweet.

So, Dear Self–

Next time you tell yourself a story, remember when you learned about a girl who is always re-writing, again and again.

While a novel is fiction: no start, no end,

A biography can only be written as aftermath — solely seen as honest and true then.

No, I am not a liar. But, I am also, historically speaking, at times an unreliable narrator.

So, Dear Self —

For all of the falsehoods I shared as fact, I apologize.