Why don't you try to figure out who you are before making assumptions about who I am? I think that we both know that growing up isn't about changing, it's about coping. It's about staying the same when you're going over bridges and through valleys. It's about holding yourself together, and it's about learning to love yourself.
That's what my friend Melissa wrote in my yearbook at the end of high school, “I love you so much you have no idea. Love yourself.” And I love her too, still, because it hasn't been that long since we kissed and confided, since we were close like family. Sometimes it takes your own love for another to realize that you must love yourself too, sometimes that's the only thing that can make it real. Thank God that Melissa loves me, she is a blessing and a friend.
I should write her a letter. We're both a lot older now, it seems, but not in years. Everything in my mind is measured in what has come and gone, and that bears no quantitative chronology. Because many things pass, and many things change, and they affect me—but I am still the same. I have different memories and new lost loves to reminisce over, I have finally learned the joy of a long term partner and sex, I have found that so very many things around me have transformed and they have put new thoughts in me. But it is still me, it is still the boy in middle school wearing black plastic bracelets, it is still the creative boy who isn't very good at soccer and so they won't let him play. Still the baby who cried over a burned gingerbread man.
It's a good thing because I think if I were really changing, that would be very difficult. Because, you know, I can't even handle staying the same. I wrote in a poem the other day, “I can't pull myself together and that's liberation.” At least it is me that is always falling apart and coming together. At least it is me who I love and hate and all of that. I am lucky to have only one identity.
It's not that I want to see others hurt, but I need to take care of myself, too. That takes time, and I am so grateful for your patience. I love you so much you have no idea. Love yourself.
Staying the Same, for Melissa, with loving gratitude.