A Letter To My Younger Self

This has to be the most intimate letter I have ever written. It's one of a kind. I have been wanting to talk to her. Here we go:

' Hey baby. Let's start with the part where you join boarding school in Class Two. Having started school in a remote public school, one of the biggest shifts you will experience here is language, but that is nothing to worry about. You will catch up sooner than you think, and you're too young to worry about anything anyway.You are lucky to be in the same school with your older siblings because that will save you from a lot of adjusting struggles that you would have faced if you were all alone. Your big sister will play a huge role in showing you around this new place and teaching you how to do simple things like spreading your bed, brushing your shoes, washing your light clothes and taking care of yourself. She will even help you make friends with girls in your class.Later in life when you look back, you will value these little things that she taught you in ways you didn't know you could.

Your performance won't be impressive at first, you will improve steadily and a year is all that it will take before you are at the top. Visiting days, sports days and closing days are some of the 'fun' days you will be accustomed to long for. Ouh! And those contest days where you will be the best performed student in a subject or two, making you and your teachers proud. Being in a Catholic school, those special Sundays would be a thing too.

Years will pass by real quick and soon you will be out of here.You will come to appreciate these early years of your life when you realize that they were the most peaceful and drama-free years, full of nothing but good memories. One of your closest friends here will meet you close to a decade later and would be utterly surprised at how good you speak, and you will wonder how bad your accent used to be, huh! You will do well in your final exams, but not well enough to have you join any of the national schools you wanted. That will really frustrate you and I wish you would accept that early enough, because it will affect your high school performance.

Fate would have it that you will join the same high school as your sister. Her presence will sooth you a little.You won't know but that'd be God's way of letting you spend a good time together, because after here, things won't always be the same.Throughout to the time she does her KCSE, she will show you the purest forms of love, and those are some of the good things you will remember in some deep way in a few years.

Your high school life won't be full of so much fun, but you will get used to that. In Form 3, you will be appointed as one of the student leaders. Based on your personality, you will be that student leader that almost everyone likes. That will work for, and against you. When the latter happens, everything will look so ugly that you will want to quit being a leader, no one will let you do that though.Some incidents will push you to your limits and break you a little, but you will get through them. One of the best things that will happen in this phase of your life is the friends you will make. These friendships will be some of the best you will ever know. And the close girlies will stick around for years.

Soon you will be an all- grown teenager in her final year. On your Prayers' Day, you will be part of a short play that you won't know will mean so much to your Dad.Having played the role of a deputy principal, your Dad would want you to pursue Education and will always use that as a reference, saying how much of a good teacher you can be! He won't forget that, he will tell you about it even years after you choose to pursue a different career. That won't make you regret though, you will just love the fact he will remember this little thing for years.

Life after Form 4 won't be as rosy as you'd want it to be. And here is where your life, sort of 'begins.' It would have helped if you were a little less vulnerable but, sadly, that won't be the case. By the time you join campus, you will be feeling emotionally down. And somehow, that would lead to the start of your dating life.

Within the first few months in campus, you will make good friends and you will spend most of your time with your girls. You will meet several men who will want to be with you, but you will genuinely fall in love with one. Something like, love at first sight! With all the innocence of a teenager like you, you will immerse yourself in it, not knowing that things will escalate real quick.And that your whole life will change in no time.

Towards the end of 2018, you will conceive and everything will only get worser. Amidst struggling with acceptance and keeping that reality to yourself, you will lose your closest sister on 14th January, 2019. Conceiving and then losing a loved one! That's heavy. If I could hug you, I'd hug you for hours because 2019 will be the toughest year of your life. The second semester of your first year will be a nightmare for real. You will cry your heart out almost every single day. Emotions will be so heavy on you, and you won't have any clue on how to handle them. That will drain you so bad, emotionally and physically. So bad that you will forget how it feels like to be happy.

You will have the toughest of days, and then those days will turn into weeks, and weeks to months. You will feel so helpless.Everything around you will be so dark. Too much stressing and anxiety will get you to a point where you will occasionally wake up in the middle of night, struggling to breathe.That will scare you so bad and you'd think you won't make it out of here.Two months before you deliver your son, your grandma will breathe her last right before your eyes, another low moment. You will feel like the whole world is working against you.

August 3rd, 2019, is the day you will hold your son in your arms for the first time. The sight of him will fill your soul with so much life. Despite being so broken, you will give your son the best of you from day one! And that's so beautiful.Unfortunately, you will have to defer your studies for a year, so you can take care of him.That won't sit right with you for some time but later on, you will come to agree that it was necessary to take a break from school.

Life will get better, but staying at home for long will come with its own challenges, which will slowly begin to take a toll on you. A global pandemic will strike and everything will escalate from bad to worse.Life will really suck at some point. The things that will break you this time are the kind of things you won't always want to talk about. Gladly, God will hold you steady enough and you won't give up.

You will finally get back to school, thanks to time! Separation from your son will be so hard to handle, but you will manage.

Re-uniting with your friends will feel good, and better still; making new ones. 

When you find yourself all over again, you will begin to appreciate all the little things in life; laughter with friends, good pictures, going out/dates, evening walks, a peaceful and free mind, the gift of life and all that good stuff. 

You will begin to connect with your inner self and try to understand everything about you. And you know what's amazing?You will fall in love with yourself. You will be intentional about living life more wholesomely, and you will do just that, in the little ways you know best! 

However, there are things you would wish would happen a certain way, but they won't. And that's life! You will still make small mistakes. You will have a fair share of good times and bad times. In all that, you will slowly learn to take things easy. And one day, when you sit down and write a letter to your younger self, you will realize that life is beautifully chaotic.'