A Love Letter To Future Me

By: Ashley Green

Dear future me,

(Real quick, before we get into the sappy stuff, are we a redhead now? I’m sorry, out of everything to possibly start off this anxiety-filled introduction, I begin with your possible change of hair. I just really want to know if we had the balls to finally swap that boring black for a sleek cherry red? If not, clearly my anxiety in the next however many years it took you to build up the confidence to open this letter is still heightened…anyways back to the actual letter).

How has it been? If I had to guess how old you are now, I would say you are probably 30 years old living a spectacular lifestyle with a communications career in one of the major cities in the country with a stellar closet selection and even more dazzling Birkin bag. I know, 10 years later and still as delusional. Those were all of our dreams. I know for all of our life, all we felt was constant regret and disappointment for what life was turning out to be. I am in a really rough spot right now because I am constantly overthinking the outcome of all the decisions I have made in all aspects of living. 

We have never fully made our own decisions in life given the fact that we are the first  to get this far in terms of educational outcomes, which has caused a significant amount of added stress. Mom has always put our education first. We were told since we were 5 that we were going to be an anesthesiologist and that’s final. Then after she died, it morphed into journalism and that was also final. I never had any input into how I wanted to live my own life and what career path I wanted to pursue. I have always been told that I was an excellent writer and that’s why journalism is best fit, but what if I wanted to go beyond the traditional newsroom narrative? What if I wanted to build a name for myself across various fields of the industry and solidified a worthy reputation? That’s one thing that I hope we finally nipped in the bud. I hope we learned how to listen to people's opinions, but we followed our gut instinct and made our dreams into reality.

I guess it would be boring if we talked about the future and didn’t bring up anything about our crumbling love life. Did we finally meet him? As a kid, we used to spend hours upon hours non stop journaling about our dream husband-to-be, for which I would love to put a blame on Disney and their rom-coms that made me delusional about love since my childhood. Currently, as in the last six years, I have been going through my own personal downfall, which is self sabotage. I don’t put myself out there enough to even find the potential man of my dreams. 

My constant routine is going to school, work, going on my phone, maybe the gym, and repeating. I’ve been stuck on that loop since my sophomore year of college and I still wonder how I am the only person I know who has always stayed single. I’m not complaining too much because the idea of a man constantly bothering me everyday and rattles my mind a bit, but it must come to an end. I hope we got rid of overthinking and playing it safe 24/7. That we stuck to this routine of going out with our friends and not letting our inner thoughts sabotage our mental health. I hope we are finally happy again and don’t have to worry about a wave of deep depression affecting our life. Are we proud of ourselves for the first time since Mom died because that’s what she always wanted for her children. Success and happiness is what I am manifesting for my future and it’s just up to myself to finally accomplish it. 

Love, Ashley <3

P.S. I really hope we have a Birkin bag or else my Pinterest board is going to waste!