Dear October-27th-2019-me,

It’s been exactly a year since I was you, sat there, talking to a camera to try and keep a record of your — lack of — sanity. Broken, scared, confused and desperate to find ways to go back to our confident 23-year-old-self.

I know you, for a fact, better than you know yourself at the moment. And, let me tell you: the last 365 days were a crazy journey. A battle you managed, and still are managing, to thrive in.

We suffered major loss, major scares, we had to face the ugly side of people we loved, and our own ugly sides. We felt our confidence being shattered into pieces. We got sick. We had uncomfortable talks that made us feel like our insides were being put through a meat-grinder. We saw a second chance. We got sicker. We made the hardest decisions. And we had to accept help. You — and I, for that matter — were never alone. Not even once. Not in the slightest.

We cried, yes. We cried so hard we thought pain was never ceasing, but always in the kindest shoulders. We felt loved. Taken care of. We saw, for a fact, we had it all along.

We got sicker. And sicker. Maybe it’s Celiac Desease. Maybe it’s stomach cancer. Maybe you’re just anxious, depressed and anorexic. Not alone, though.

“Eat”, they said. “Eat?”, they asked. “Eat!”, they demanded. And we ate. We accepted medication. We accepted the unconditional love we believed we weren’t worthy of. And things started to fall back into place.

You noticed and accepted the amazing support system you had and, to this day, I keep experiencing a great feeling of true gratitude and belonging. And that incredible amount of support — and the feelings that came along with it — were the first step towards the moment you started to get to know me.

You and I shook hands. We saw ourselves bare, naked, in front of a soul mirror. And for the first time in so long, we didn’t hate what we saw. We didn’t hate the body-now-temple we reside in. We didn’t hate our personality, or our sense of humor. We didn’t hate our sexuality, nor our hyper-sexuality. We didn’t hate who we were as a person, as a friend, as a daughter, as a sister. And that, dear October-27th-2019-me, was a game-changing-moment.

From that moment on, we made music. We made new friends and kept closer than ever with our old ones. We confidently stepped on a stage and played our own music in front of hundreds of people — and loved every second of it. We wore whatever the fuck we wanted to wear, we showed as much skin as we wanted to show, we stood tall in places we would have hidden before. We got back into photography and literature and fashion. We got back into the fights we were always so passionate about.

We were seen for who we actually are, and always were — to be honest. We were seen as a grown woman. We were seen as someone that can be vulnerable. As an old soul. As a muse. As a fighter and as the bossy-ass-bitch we can be sometimes. And it feels great to be us right now.

I’m sorry we’ll never go back to being our confident 23-year-old-self. But we get to be me, and I am the unapologetic 25-year-old-you that is here to say: thank you. I love you. I’m proud of you and, now that you’re up-to-date with all of that, hold on tight. It’s about to be a hell of a ride.