My future self comes to visit.
Breathless. Exhilarated. I feel such vast appreciation in the midst of all this glory. This is my own house, my home, my very own space. I am young, and strong, and impressive. I revel in it.
The mirror reflects my face and I see a woman that I love as a daughter, but more. My young, beautiful, lost-but-waking-up little self. I see into my eyes as I let no one else see. I feel how I’m holding myself in such strict control that I twitch, and I’m uncomfortable from all the hunching of shoulders, tensing of muscles. Poor girl, so strict with myself.
From top of mind she melts and melds with me. I feel her shimmering, massaging my mind and muscles. With her essence I become my mentor, guide, coach. I am infused with her appreciation for all that I am, her motherly love that is me as mother, not my mother internalized. I view myself from her vantage point, then my own. I am a stereogram.
She nudges my thinking, questions me gently and with compassion, injects pride into my self-inflicted shame when I finally own up to yet another way I’m still fooling myself.
She’ll flash in to talk me through a difficult moment. There have been times I have decided wilfully to ignore her, but she thinks that’s kind of cute and I’m doubly ashamed.
She shows me that I love this time in my life so intensely that I will always mourn it. Her ache of loss behind my lungs catches breath and heightens awareness of my life’s incredibleness.
My future self often stands behind me now, when I face my critics. I can handle anything, because, she whispers, I already have. She chants quietly, for just me to hear: I am strong, I am powerful, I am progressing.
Eventually, like dusk to night, she dissipates and fades in my consciousness.
But increasingly, I trust myself to find her again, to call her instead of waiting for her to appear. She’s with me more and more. One day, maybe we will merge. Until then, I look forward to her visits.
