Dear Kirsten,

This is Kirsten. 
Maybe I seem to you a dreamy figure, with briefcases and bookshelves and boobs, but I think at this point you have so much more that is foreign to me.

You think of me now as an icon, a milestone to reach, but someday you will find that I am amorphous. That the vision of your 20-something self will never be constant and can never be mapped out. I remember the way you sit and imagine your freckles spilling out across adult features and flirty smiles. And eventually the image shifts and you picture me as edgy, unpractical, spontaneous. You have named me many things, tried to form me in many ways. You put so much pressure on me to have it all figured out. But Kirsten it can't be done.

Pretty soon you will wake up on a family vacation, with Mom and Dad's spherical faces hovering over your morning vision and whispering. Behind them you will notice a blinding sunshine through the sliding glass doors. You will hear them ask why you are smiling, you just woke up why are you smiling, and the hotel sheets will smell of citrus, your tiny body exploring their shape. And then you will hear them say that this is what you always do, this is how you always wake up, and for the first time you will have a sense of the only thing impermeable, unwavering, that you want to keep.

Stop thinking about that mocking question you're always asked. Assholes who ask 8-year-olds for their future professions are still just assholes. Stop spewing out that you'll become a ballerina or a vet or a singer. We both know you don't mean any of it, you're just scared that you need to grasp something and call it yours. 

But stop worrying and pulling your own hair. Because one day you will have the citrus on the bedsheets. And the rest will follow.




<3 Kirsten