To past me (of 2006)

Hey you,

It's 2006, summer is coming. Exams are worrying you. Your cousin W is getting married, your sister just announced she's getting married too (but you don't know when) and another cousin is set to get married soon.

You have anxiety, but the depression has lifted temporarily. You are starting to make friends at uni and starting to find your tribe.

Unfortunately, you thought you saw the worst of it. That tribe eventually falls apart and they leave you. Your health does get better, but it gets worse first. You don't meet a girl for another year and a few months and by then you already went to a mental hospital and attempted suicide, plus you have anger issues that still affect me today.

What I want to say is: don't sweat some of the small stuff, or even the big stuff. Just keep being you.

You are going to make some mistakes along the way, some small, some big, some really big. Some are life changing to such a degree that I still regret them. But I am not writing to you about that.

You will not find much luck or fortune and life won't be fair. You will find a place, maybe for a while, not forever, but you do find places that you belong. Your pain and the shit that stuck on you makes you a pretty special person. You don't realise that now

You don't realise that you are also quite an attractive person inside. Eventually you become quite a sexy man (and its not just the hair). But don't worry about that, don't even look forward to it. What matters is who you are now and what you are aiming for. That is so important to who you are now, it became fundamentally important to who I am right now.

I know that you miss the past. You miss belonging somewhere, having a name and being someone recognisable and someone who felt special. You will learn that you can find those things in other aspects of your life.