Dear Younger Me,
A letter poem to my past self
Dear Younger Me,
You’ve always struggled seeing the best in people, even when they showed you their worst.
Struggled with being your authentic self.
Struggled with staying quiet when met with passive aggression.
You were taught this.
To be calm.
That your emotions were too big.
Too bold.
Too much.
It led you to being abused.
From family, friends, platforms, etc.
Like Cassandra, you were groomed to ignore your intuition.
Groomed to not speak up for yourself for fear of being deemed insane.
What if I told you,, that abuse and passive aggression isn’t normal behavior?
The people in class who would always refute that you said whether you were right or wrong.
People who would selectively target you and get others to turn against you.
Isolating you.
Making you feel undeserved, unloved, and inept.
People who saw your Blackness, Autism, and Queerness, as a threat.
Little me,,
What if I knew that at one point you began fighting back?
Speaking up.
Standing in your truth.
What if you knew that certain behaviors from others isn’t love but envy.
But a one sided competition that you never knew you were competing in and still winning.
What if you knew of the concept of Projection?
And how those projections found you as a target.
As an adult who has agency over their life,, I’m here to tell you:
Divine Rage is sacred. Especially in a world that thrives on the silence of Young Black Neurodivergents. Especially when you’ve been conditioned to hold emotions in.
You learn to practice your emotional control. Your empathy and intuition was never a curse. It was a gift that others feared.
You learned how to respond to abuse. To passive aggression. To attempts of throwing you off balance. And damn, don’t you feel proud.
You become the person who should’ve protected you when you were young.
You are loved.