letters to my younger self: 18 year old me.

Dear Sausa,

You’re probably outta high school right now. Spirits are high. You’ve got a spring in your step, and the world feels like it’s right there waiting to be unwrapped. You think you’re ready and I don’t blame you. I remember that feeling too clearly. The hunger for advanced level. You’re walking around with your chest out, and your dreams loud. And God I miss you. Not just the idea of you… I miss the actual you. I miss me then. I miss how you still believed that everything would somehow work out just because it should. I miss how you thought the worst thing in life was not getting the A’level combination you applied for. I miss your loud music, your soft heart, your overuse of cologne, your belief that love was just around the corner, or maybe two corners away. I miss the you who cried during certain films(Dear John, to be specific) and didn’t even try to hide it. The one who smiled at strangers for no reason. The one who still said “God bless you” without sarcasm.

And here’s the eerie part…. the part I almost don’t want to write or tell you about.

Everything is about to change.

Not in some dramatic movie way. But in the kind of way that doesn’t send a warning. It just… happens. Quietly, Over months. Over years. Little by little, life will pull at the edges of who you are. Then it will take bigger bites, and eventually, you’ll find yourself drowning in the deepest part of your life. Cold. Alone in your head. Fighting demons and not just the ones you inherited, but the ones you’ll create yourself, Fear, Shame, Doubt, Silence. They will show up and they will not knock. Some will tear you apart. Others will quietly sit in the room and take up all the air but if I am here writing this it means you survive it all and I won’t pretend that you’ll come out untouched. But you’ll definitely come out and that’s something worth saying out loud.

There’s something strange about being you at eighteen sausa ‘cause You walk through the world like someone who’s already lived a life before this one. You’re always half-present, like your body is in the room but your mind is three conversations away, running silent diagnostics on everyone around you. You know people too well.

Especially girls.

You see the way they move, talk, laugh, pretend not to notice you noticing. You know them better than you should and the knowing doesn’t bring comfort but confusion. You study them like puzzles, pieces shifting in your hands, never quite clicking into place. There’s no excitement in it for you, not like it is for other boys your age, not the giddy heart thumping, note passing and song dedicating kind ‘cause you want something more and maybe something real and even when you get close, it’s like touching glass, a reflection only, Surface level. You don’t talk about why. Not really yet. But it’s there inbetween the lines of your clever jokes, behind the punchlines you deliver with perfect timing. The kind of jokes that make people laugh just enough to leave you alone and the truth is, you’re not like the others ‘cause you carry a man’s mind in a boy’s frame, it’s heavy and aches at the joints. You think too deeply about things that haven’t even happened yet. You analyze moments like they’re chess moves. You already know what someone will say before they say it and you wish you didn’t. Because that kind of knowing makes you tired & lonely which makes you watch life instead of live it and then you’ll feed your mind for distraction constantly with books & music. You’ll even chose literature at advanced level and not medicine like your mother wants you to and she’ll not understand, well not yet but that decision, that quiet rebellion will open something in you which will teach you how to give shape to thoughts that would’ve drowned you otherwise. You’ll discover keats, Achebe and suddenly, you’ll not feel as alone as you thought but still, there’s a hunger your mind has that no book can feed and you’ll learn how to hide it in sarcasm and wordplay and sentences that sound like poetry but are actually cries for help wrapped in metaphor.

People will say you’re witty or you’ll think of yourself that way but they don’t know it’s survival but you will find another way to cope, the worst way, but before all that, time will pass and you’ll finish A’level.

You can’t wait to leave home because the walls feel too tight and the town, too small, since you’re an only child the silence at home feels louder each day and University is a light in the distance. A promise. A clean slate. You’re giddy with hope, packing more dreams than clothes, believing that without a shadow of doubt you’ll survive it and you’ll thrive and finally the world will understand you but little do you know that what’s waiting for you isn’t a clean slate but a storm.

Wait, not even a storm but a war.

And you didn’t bring armor boy., The demons won’t knock this time but kick the door in. You thought you had them caged sausa. You thought the books and clever words and loud music could keep them quiet boy? But uni is a battlefield where everything you thought you’d escaped comes back armed boy and what’s even worse is that you let them out yourself boy, stupid boy. You try to cope but the old ways, the subtle distractions, wit & detachment, charm aren’t enough anymore but become the fuel and soon you’re not just fighting your demons but also feeding them. You’ll give up more than once and you’ll lose the will to keep fighting and the things you used to reach for to keep yourself sane now betray you, twist you, empty you out and God, how I wish I could be there. To guide you. Hold you. To whisper when to say no and to shout when to say yes because I know how much you need it. it now feels like sitting with someone you love before the storm.

But here’s the thing I told you, didn’t I? The fact that I’m writing this to you means you survived but that took everything and you needed six or maybe seven allies who are all therapists, all different but vital ‘cause you needed to pull yourself out of your own burning mind and drag what was left of you into a place where healing could begin.

And when it was over or at least quiet you looked back and there it was. The battlefield. With a thousand bodies on the ground, each one a different version of you, the ones who gave up, the ones who lied to themselves, the ones who turned into shadows to keep breathing and beside them, their demons too. Shapeless, silent and finally still.

You’ll stand in the middle of that field, covered in blood, breath shallow, heart sore but you’ve survived sausa, you’re tired and now it's time to cleanup, a long, slow return to yourself. You’ll carry scars that no one sees, the kind that keep some people away, too afraid to touch what they don’t understand but also the kind that invite the curious. “What happened here?” they’ll ask. Only a few will ask and even fewer will stay long enough to listen but those who stay will see you. The real you.

And now… couple years later, things get better. Not perfect. Not easier.Just… better. Life stays lifing but so do you.

And that, my dear 18-year-old me, is the most beautiful thing of all.

Yours in his feels as he pens this

James