Dear Ave,

Almost the end of May. Sitting in a coffeeshop in Kemptown called Marmalade. Off today. Went to my diabetes appointment this morning and they weighed me and I’m still 80kg. Still need to lose that 10kg I’ve been wanting to lose for years. Still need to learn how to drive. Still need to stop ordering deliveroo. Still need to pay off the credit card. Still need to go to the dentist and have my teeth fixed. Still need do this, do that. The list of unmet goals doesn’t seem to end, Ma. And I constantly just fail at them because if it doesn’t serve me now, then they are things I can push aside.

Without you and my family around me, who am I? Without all these social pressures I put on myself, who am I? All I know is that things never seem to be enough. I’m constantly wanting, chasing things I do not have or being someone I’m not. If I were true to myself, this is how I think of myself: I’m lazy, I don’t have integrity and I get distracted by flashy things. But I pretend that I’m not any of those things. The truth is, I never do the things I say I will do. (“I will start dieting”– does a half-baked diet and gets sad that she hasn’t lost weight.) I’m impatient and unkind. I complain a lot and I do not like it when I don’t get what I want. I am very sensitive to criticism. I’m unimpressed by most people– I think that because I fail to achieve the standards that I want for myself I just think all people are fallible. I don’t know if that sentence makes sense. Lately, things don’t seem to be taking too much sense, or I’m unable to make sense of them.

Have I told you of the numerous nights I’m always scared going to sleep, or wake up in the middle of the night feeling dread, or how suddenly being in a plane makes me feel like I’m going to have a panic attack, or the anxiety I feel in closed spaces? I’ve had all these fears before, even when I was a child, but it seems to have reared its big head higher than ever now. I’m scared of many things– of losing people again, of losing Tom. I always think that if I lose him I will end it and it will all be fine. I think I won’t make it past 50- that I already know my destiny and I will write the ending of my story.

I think about the life I could’ve had if I had stayed back home for the past 8 years and who I would be now. I think I’ll be the same person. All this thinking that I’ve changed because I have been away for years, but did I really change? I’m still the same person with the same fears, insecurities, feelings, thoughts, flaws.. I still cry easily, I still judge people easily, I still think I’m not enough. I think of the child that I was– and I want to tell her it’s all going to be OK. At 35, you will have a good-paying job that you are good at and live in a flat near the sea with your loving husband and wake up late on days off and go to coffee shops and buy cute things that you like and be able to go to coffeeshops and write like this and go on walks. But sometimes all I can tell her is that at 35, she is still the same lazy, insecure, sensitive person who hasn’t really achieved anything and is still struggling with her emotions the same way she was at 16. And that at 35, she thinks more of that way out.

Love,

Hershey