Me Myself and I

I’m taking a class called Writing Your Solo Show, where you write, stage, and act in a show of your creation in the span of a single college quarter. It’s precisely as thrilling—and terrifying—as it sounds. We’re rounding the bend toward performance time, and my professor recently pushed me to dig deeper into my characters. “What is her purpose?” they asked about the little girl at the center of my piece.

As a writer (yes, I’m still working on saying that with my full chest), it was the right question for my next draft. A guiding light, even. But it also stung because it hit too close to home. This play is a conversation between my nine-year-old self and my twenty-seven-year-old self. To my professor, they’re just characters. And to some extent, when I’m writing—especially now—they are just characters to me, too. But at their core, they are still me.

Writing this play has been cathartic, terrifying, and revealing. If I were a therapist, I might assign everyone to sit down and have a full-on conversation with their past, present, and future selves—maybe even their alternate-universe selves if they were feeling particularly funky. Because while we can’t change the past or predict the future, we can reimagine it. And this process has allowed me to do just that.

It’s made me consider what I learned, what I avoided learning, and what I might go back and teach myself if given the chance. For that nine-year-old girl, I’d tell her she doesn’t have to fix anyone else. People will make their own choices, and some of those choices will hurt her, but she is resilient. She will survive. Because, unfortunately, sometimes our fears are real—but so is our steadfastness.

For my twenty-seven-year-old self, I’d beg her to pay attention to how her body feels around people. Because, as it has been said and remains true, the body keeps the score.

Considering yourself a character in your own life story is a profound experience. The past stays the same, but the future still has time. Writing about my younger self has helped me better understand the present version of me, and the advice I give them—the way I cheer them on, feel their pain, and hold space for them—is necessary.

Lately, I’ve been asking myself: What would I tell my twenty-four-year-old self, who is now twenty years my junior, by some miracle of time looping? What did she need to know? There are so many things, but one rises above the rest:

You will lose nothing by walking away from people who are not intentional about you—because if their intentions are non-existent, you already have less than nothing.

It stings to think about the time I wasted in relationships—romantic, platonic, and everything in between—that were never meant for me or had long since run their course. It's easy to say that now twenty years wiser with the privilege of time and sound therapy on my side. But that twenty-four-year-old, twenty-seven-year-old, and even that nine-year-old had to live as they did so that I might one day recognize what a nervous system at peace feels like when it’s met with people who mean you well.

Intentional people are a gift to those of us who have, at times, struggled to feel worthy. And intention—honest, deliberate, unwavering—quiets all that doubt, including the intentional ways we show up for ourselves. So I spend a lot of time reminding those past versions of myself—and the one walking around in my body right now—You have always been worthy.

I can’t script my real life. It’s all improv. But it is guided by the lessons of the versions of me that I plan to keep writing toward greater acceptance of their journey. They are my guides. And I hope that when they hear turn right instead of left, they know it’s me over here—years removed—helping them navigate closer to me. Because somewhere ahead, there’s another future version of us, writing us all closer to her.