A letter from April 29th, 2020

Dear Future Me, Today is April 29th 2020. I’m writing to you (me), as an assignment from The 6-Minute Diary, a self-help journal I just started. Before I get into everything, I want to give you a little overview of where you are in life right now, so you can remember clearly. Your daughter was born exactly one month ago, on March 29th, 2020. She was born at 11:45 am. Your son just turned two on April 18th, 2020. You moved out of the apartment you shared with Chris, two weeks ago at only two weeks postpartum and in with your dad and step mother. He left you back in January, two weeks after New Years Eve, which you spent together at his parents house. He made a tinder account and he slept with someone named Aly. He spent the next 3 months, telling you that he couldn’t stand you and that he was SINGLE and that he couldn’t wait for you to leave, but you still loved him. You blamed yourself for what he did. You keep wondering what you did so wrong to deserve to be treated the way he treated you and how unlovable you must be, for someone to be able to leave you while you’re carrying their child. Monday, Chris drove all the way to my dad’s house to pick up your son for the first time since you separated. He kept him for 5 days. You felt relieved and thankful for the break, but empty at the same time. Yesterday, you had a mental breakdown. I cried for 6 hours straight and you Googled “ways to **** myself”. You were scared that you were going to hurt yourself or your baby, so you called your midwife, who diagnosed you with severe postpartum depression, anxiety, and Complex PTSD. She immediately prescribed me medication. Today, 30 minutes ago, you got home from CVS, where you picked up your prescription for Lexipro, an antidepressant, and Xanax for when you have major episodes (which you’re hoping you never have to use). You took your first antidepressant right before starting to write this. You’re scared about how it’s going to impact you. Now... I want to talk about where I hope you are now. I hope and pray that you are truly, genuinely, unapologetically happy — not only happy on some days, not only happy on social media, not only happy because you don’t want to let your family down again, but actually HAPPY. I pray that you survived the first months and years of raising two very young children as a single mother with nothing more than a few bumps and bruises, even though it will be, without a doubt, one of the hardest things you’ll ever do. They will test you and push you past your limits. You will scream and cry and doubt yourself more than once, but every day, you’ll wake up and you’ll keep raising those babies and you will do your best, even if your best is only getting through the day. I’m proud of you for getting through the days when you didn’t think you could. I hope that you were strong for your children. That no matter what was going on around you or inside of you, you stayed strong for them and you showed them what a true warrior looked like. They will look up to you more than you’ll ever know. I pray that your heart has healed from the trauma. I pray that you no longer feel like you can’t breath when you think of the pain you went through. I pray that you look back on the days that it felt like you were dying, because the emotional pain caused you to be physically ill and you take a deep breath and feel thankful that you never felt that pain again. I pray that your heart no longer yearns for someone to just give you the bare minimum. I pray that you never have to feel what you felt when you were with him again. I pray that you have high standards and you don’t accept anything less than what you believe you deserve. I pray that you let him go, even though it destroyed you to do so. I pray that your financial situation did a 360. I pray that you saved everything you could and that you built your credit score and that you turned your life around completely in that aspect, even though I’m sure it was a slow and grueling process. I pray that you focused on YOU. I pray that every day, at some point, you took time for yourself. I pray that you finished that 6-Minute Diary. I pray that you practiced personal development. I pray that you did yoga. I pray that you found your way to the gym, your happy place. I bet you’re in the best shape of your life right now. You’re amazing. Your son should have just turned seven and your daughter should have just turned five. It’s amazing how fast time flies. I hope that you’re reading this, with tears steaming down your face, not because you’re sad, but because you survived something that almost ****** you. You are a survivor of domestic abuse. You are a survivor of extreme narcissistic abuse. You broke free from a cycle that would have destroyed your life. You left with one year old and a newborn and you pushed on, even on the days when you would have rather been dead. You changed your life for the better and you saved your children from a lifetime of unhappiness and generational toxicity. I hope you’re so ******* proud of yourself. You did it. You made it. I love you. I hope your love yourself today. xoxo, 24 year old you