I wrote myself this letter last summer after I’d written… well… I don’t really know how to talk about that particular manuscript I wrote, and I’m not sure I want to either. Anyway, let’s just say it allowed me to find the child-me in myself—and all the dark memories of terror he’d already accumulated but also the goals I carried and the hopes that carried me.
Mostly I’m sharing it because—well I don’t know why I share anything anymore in this time of AI sweeping up our voices for the profit of billionaire oligarchs. I guess partly I’m sharing it for the hypothesis that emerged as I wrote it, namely that the presence I used to feel around me when I was a child was me now reflecting back on and lifting up the child that was me so many years ago. I used to think it was a ghost or something. Maybe it was. Maybe it was just future me thinking back so intently that I projected myself backward, and since it’s me projecting and it was me being projected to, why wouldn’t I have recognized the presence of myself in some sublimated way. Eh… it’s a fascinating mindfuck of an idea at least, but anyway the letter is worthwhile in itself.
Hey kiddo!
First of all, I love you so much. And I know you don’t want to hear this and you won’t understand it yet anyway, but I’ll always love you the most. You’re going to spend a long time chasing after a love better than mine, but then you’re going to see that you’ve needed my love, your own love, as much as I’ve needed yours.
You can’t even fathom the decisions I’ll make for you, the agonies I’ll endure for you. But I’ve done it all for you, kid.
And the things we’ll do! My gods, you have no idea! It might not amount to much to anyone else, but you’ll realize long before you get here that what most people have been conditioned to value lacks any worth at all.
I know it doesn’t matter whatever I could tell you for advice. I am you, silly. So I know we’re as stubborn as they come and no one’s ever gonna tell you a damn thing. But no matter what, you’re going to go on thinking you’re less than them, and everything around you is going to tell you how much less you matter than them. But they’re wrong. They’re all fucking wrong. I’d tell you to trust that voice in your head telling you they’re wrong, but I know that you will and you won’t anyway no matter what anyone could say. You’ll realize that for sure in a few years, anyway, you’ll see, and a few years after that those dumb assholes all around you are going to see it too. Talent wins out, as they say.
And what’s more, you’ll never believe this, but once Gma finds out about our sexuality, and that father of ours, too, it’s going to be ok. She’s going to freak out. I mean, you know her… the freak out will be real, but relatively fleeting. But you’ll be ready for it when it happens. I’m really happy to say you’ll handle that one with dignity. I’ll always be proud of you for that.
But I wish you’d do it if I told you to forgive yourself for your mistakes. They don’t define you now and they never will. Hermes is guiding you. My love, I am you, you are me, and we are Hermes. I mean, everyone is, but you are going to see it in a way the others haven’t. I know that’ll make you laugh. It still makes me laugh.
But just stop for a second. Think about this with me. You communicate with trees! Our Crabapple knows you. The trees you know know you and they know we can feel what they’re saying. You don’t get it yet, but that’s not something just anyone experiences. You are me and I am you and we are Hermes’ charge! Athena is listening, you’re right; you’ve always felt it, but now I know it. Eventually you’re going to realize that those entities you’ve sensed but can’t see aren’t projections from inside yourself.
Kiddo, we were never alone, and when you see that in a few decades—look, I know, but we’re so fucking obstinate that it’s going to be a few decades. Anyway, once we see that we’ve never been alone, you are going to taste freedom mere. You will greet ancient snow-caps and their streams, you will hear the rush of mountains speaking to you. Saguaro will learn your name, and hundreds of trees, too. Coyote will guard you in wild places, and Eagle and Owl will keep watch over your days and nights. You’ll recognize the sound of Ocean in the winds through mountain Pine.
And I’ll tell you another thing. Just in your darkest moment you are going to stumble out of the underbrush onto a narrow path laid by Hermes himself, and at the end of it, you’ll be me, and I’ll’ve found you again after decades without you, having been chasing your dreams without any damn clue why, or even whose dreams they were, as I tried to fill the wounds in your broken little heart without knowing it, stuffing myself with books and music and men and ideas and whatthefuckever else.
And just near the end of that path where I’ve been waiting—and waiting and waiting, because we don’t ever learn anything like patience, or else we haven’t yet—your dream is going to become reality.
Seven, seven, twenty-three
Lucca got a PhD!
Can you believe it? I know you can’t yet. You don’t even know your name yet. But you are going to bear that title, Doctor. But it’s not going to mean a goddamn thing to either of us by the end of it. That title will be ours, though, no matter the shit we have to climb over to get it.
When I find you again, lil man, I’m not ever going to let you go. It’s you and me until the end, and I’ll just be so grateful to see you, kiddo, to be able to hug you, finally, and hold you through those extra-dark nights when you can’t sleep because you know what could happen to you, so you lie in bed trying to not let yourself be terrified, or think about how utterly alone you feel, wishing there was someone there to hold you and tell you concretely how it will be alright. I’ll be there with you. Really I was always already there with you and neither of us knew it until now.
Once you get to the end of this path to me, I’ll be there with you. You’ll realize you’ve always been there with you. And then you’ll feel me there with you like I’ve always been there, even if you have no idea what you’re feeling right now, ghosts or monsters or who knows what.
Sure, there’s a ghost that’ll save your life eventually, like a solid breeze that’ll keep you from falling down the same overly steep flight of stairs that had snapped his neck. His name was Jeff. He was a good man who was alone in a world that makes everyone else behave so badly.
But those aren’t ghosts with you in your bedrooms or on any of those campuses or across the country, always hovering over you or kind of beside you, wishing I could speak to tell you that I’ve always been there for you, that I’m here for you, to let you know, It’s me, it’s just me; you’re safe, we’re not alone.
I know you’ll be able to feel that I’m there for you, though, as I’m straining to announce my presence so you won’t be so terrified of me, because after all you’re me and I can remember how comforting those sort-of-frightening ghost-things really were. Because those spirits are me, the me writing this, and they always have been. And we don’t have to know how it works because it did, and that’s all that matters. Now we’ll never be alone again, because we were never really alone to begin with when we’ve always had each other.
Stick with me, kiddo, you’ll see! I love you forever, Doctor!
Soooo… anyone else ever suspect the ‘ghost’ in their childhood bedrooms at night was their older selves watching over them? LOL or is this just another one of those symptoms of severe childhood trauma based partly in a profound social and familial isolation? [nervous laughter]
Another Neurodivergent Queer Writes A Blog! 
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