Emoblog/2018/01/21/Dear me@1981

Note to myself in 1981:

...wait, is this the only chance I get to explain some things, or can I send additional notes later? Let's assume I can send as many notes as I want. The "you have one chance to explain everything" trope is so contrived.

So, yeah, there's a ton of other stuff I need to explain, but the thing that I just now worked out (37 years later, so don't feel bad for not figuring it out already) has to do with the growing conflict between you and J&C. (I could probably write a whole other essay about E, but even now that's kind of unresolved.)

I don't know what time of year this will reach you, so you may or may not be aware of that conflict yet. Things were so good until the last few months of the year. I hope you're reading this before things start to slide downhill.

I also kind of hope it's after February 16. A lot of this may not make sense to you before that, since you were still kind of locked up emotionally... but maybe you can see it within you if I point it out.

(Actually, maybe I should explain quickly, in case that hasn't happened yet. Umm... basically you suddenly realize you trust Jenny more than anyone else in the world and actually like it when she hugs you... which in turn unburies a whole bunch of feelings you've been suppressing for most of your life, which turn out to be a bit of a tsunami. The hug happens on the 12th but J gives you a note about it on the 16th; I think you at least need the affirmation of knowing that her reaction was similar to yours.)

The hard thing for you to understand, I think, will be that you have this need for intensity that even your best friends can't quite meet. They still care about you and want the best for you, and maybe they can help you figure out how to find what you need, but you have to remember not to try to get it all from them. This is what ends up killing the friendship and OMG* you don't want to know how that went. Hopefully in your timeline it doesn't.

Once you've understood that, the other important thing to remember is that wanting it doesn't make you a bad person. It doesn't mean you're inadequate or faulty or not a real person somehow. Your history has given you all kinds of good reasons to feel super-needy. You don't deserve to feel as terrible as you do, and you do deserve to feel good about yourself, and there's nothing wrong with wanting to cuddle girls. (As for the TRS stuff... I still need to explain about gender dysphoria, but that feels like it needs its own note. Suffice it to say that your motives are not exploitative and actually you care for all three of them deeply and it's not some transient teenage thing. Your feelings about them will stay with you for your entire life and profoundly shape who you are and who you become. ...and also you're more right than you know when you say you're not a "man".)

I know it hurts. I'm sorry I can't help more. All I can do is tell you what I've learned since then (and again, you weren't being stupid or selfish or immature or lazy; there's just no way you could have guessed this stuff) and hope you can build a better timeline.

I expect I'll be writing more. There's a lot I need to tell you.

Try to be good to yourself.

Trust Jenny. Trust yourself.

Woozle@2018

(P.S. We don't have flying cars or even space colonies yet, but we do have color graphics computers in our pockets and... don't get me started.)

(*P.P.S. "OMG" is now a common abbreviation for "oh my god". Umm... people type a lot, here in the future, frequently on tiny keyboards. I'll explain later.)