Dear Me

A letter to my 16-year-old self, inspired by that of Stephen Fry.

Hello, and fondest greetings to you, my old friend. I would ask you how you are - really, I would – but I fear, I know what the answer will be, and I don’t really think you feel like answering.

For, you are not happy - though you would not have others believe it, that is how things are with you. You are confused, unhappy and you feel fundamentally alone; and this is causing you great and unimaginable pain inside. You surround yourself in things – events, objects and great, rambling fantasy worlds to occupy yourself, but all you are doing is deferring the pain until later. For all wounds bring pain, and all pain must be felt at some time. And with life, there is no quick anodyne, and curing your Weltschmerz is not as simple as taking Paracetamol.

You try to vent your frustrations, your confusions and your wonderings by writing poetry, by pouring your heart into arts, of word and sound, of music and letters, but it does not cure your sorrows. And all this because you are afraid. You are afraid to probe the deepest recesses of your personality – you fear what lies at the bottom of your soul, and you feel terror at the merest thought of what you are. Because really, you don’t know who or what you are – you have no firm hopes or ambitions, no dreams or aspirations, and all because of that crippling dread of discovering who you really are. But what is worse, you do not explore your abilities, your reasonings, your limitations or your desires – and at the very age at which you should be doing this! You are stunting your own development, and deliberately so.

-- And why? --

Really, you fear difference – not how most people fear it, by hating those who are different, but by fearing that you, yourself are different. That you lie outside those well-trodden social norms; that you flout that which is considered generally acceptable, normal or desirable.

You fear that you are talented – that you possess talent to a degree that is not wholly average, that your abilities are in any way remarkable, and that you possess any intellectual quality which distinguishes you from the boring, grey majority. Yet, you know that you are, that you do possess something valuable – and deep down, you really do want to develop it. But your fears hold you back. You write music, yes, but you cannot be proud of it, somehow. You do not see yourself as a musician, or an artist. You convince yourself that these will be hobbies, that they will occupy only a portion of your time. At university, you will study English or German – no, it will be law. Will it? You try to pour yourself into things you know you do not find interesting. And your school-work suffers because of this. You hate Chemistry, and you choose it anyway. Yet, the call of music is too strong, and you cannot escape it – though that is not for want of trying, for you really try earnestly to escape your destiny, your God-ordained path. And your failure dismays and injures you.

You are deeply confused and bewildered by your sexual desires. You find girls attractive, certainly, but you find boys alluring, breath-pilfering and utterly stupefying – which is not normal for a boy, so you think. You embrace your desires for girls, but you fear and even hate your desires for boys. You hate that you have crushes on boys, and you hate how you always seem to fancy them most of the time, with girls forming about 10% of your infatuations. You have grown up believing that this is odd, that it is unfathomable, and that it is socially anathema. Worse yet, you are uncertain as to whether this makes you gay or bisexual – those black, disdainful words! So, you tell yourself – ‘I am not weird – I’m straight! I’m as straight as every other boy in my class!’ But denying yourself the lion’s share of your infatuations and loves is not easy, is it? It does not make you feel better, and it does not help you to cope with your turbulent voyage through adolescence. You know how beautiful a thing love is, and most of the time, you bury it under a great mound of distractions and deceptions. You convince yourself that you merely admire those boys you think you find ‘attractive’ – every other boy feels that great heart-rending squeeze of his soul at the sight of one of his male classmates! There is nothing wrong with finding yourself day-dreaming about a boy you cannot, try as you might, put out of your mind. You desperately cling to these defence mechanisms, in the hope that you can will yourself into normality – that your feelings for various boys you know will disappear, and that you’ll be left with only your crushes on girls.

Oh, do stop deluding and misleading yourself, Tom! These truths which you build around yourself mask that which you fundamentally know is the real truth. You know that you’re not completely heterosexual – no matter how you may tell yourself otherwise, you know that you’re bisexual, and that (oh, horror of all horrors!!) you lean towards the homosexual, in fact, quite significantly so.

Why can you not see that being different is no curse? Rather than trying to wish yourself into changing, hoping that somehow, this self-denial and suppression will in some wise affect your fundamental nature, you ought to embrace your personality. Every trait which you possess is a gift from God, in whom your faith has so recently been awoken. Those tears you shed because of how hopelessly dreadful you see yourself as being are wholly and completely unnecessary! Your anguish, your suffering and your loneliness – your confusion, misery and hopelessness are needless! No convention is worth complying with purely for its own sake, or for the sake of acceptability, or the attaining of that elusive state of ‘normality’ – whatever that may be. Especially if one’s true nature is insulted and dehumanised by it.

You are a kind, warm and generous person – you are good, moral and upright – you are valuable, you are unique and everything that you are is wholly, completely and totally right! And normal! It is a good thing to be talented. Your sexual orientation is normal – as is every type of human sexuality.

You will proceed to question many of society’s norms. I won’t give too much away (because you must come to these conclusions yourself), but in seven years’ time, you will be completely different. Unrecognisable. You will have many, many friends (including several close ones), you will possess a lively and devoted faith (yes, you remain Christian, though not Roman Catholic), and you will learn to be proud of who you are.

I doubt we shall ever meet, but know that you are always in my thoughts – scarcely a day goes by when I do not think of you. For you are what I once was. And I know that you think of me sometimes – you wonder at who I am, and you long to know me. You will, and you can. Look inside yourself, for there is much treasure inside your heart which is hidden. Discover that which you already know!