A LETTER TO MY YOUNGER SELF

(A POST, I MEAN)

Welcome to the world, Albita! (cute and loving way to address myself before giving real life news)

You are just another new human being living on earth and you can’t even imagine all the experiences life has prepared for you in just 26 years...

Let me, first and foremost, give you 3 simple advices that keep pushing to come to typographic existence:

• My first advice is to encourage you to forget about the concept of ‘’home’’ and ‘’family’’ as society will impose you. You will always want a ‘’common’’ life like other kids until you’ll understand how boring what you dream about is. You’ll learn to love with your heart and not with your presence and you are lucky for that. Accepting your reality is the first step.
• My second advice needs to be read carefully: Life won’t make you deal with any situation you are not ready for. Face it and observe yourself growing. Every ‘’bad’’ experience that you will encounter (because you sadly will) will make you stronger and wiser. Your beautiful scars are what will make you different.
• And the last one I must give you, for now, is to never stop working on yourself. You’ll see how people will humanly run away from what they don’t like about themselves and will blame others for their own insecurities and unhappiness. Don’t judge, everyone is doing the best they know with their lives. Including you. Just take responsibility for your actions, thoughts and feelings. A better version of yourself will be always there for when you are ready to move toward it.

That being written, let’s start from the beginning. Your first beginning.

You are born in Madrid but you won’t come back until you are 18 and you will eventually leave when you are 26 (it didn’t happen yet but if I write you another letter -I mean, another post- in 2/3 months, I’ll be writing from another country).

From the start of your life you will be flying. You’ll fall in love with airports and clouds so much that, in the future, people might often catch you nerdly looking at the sky. They will never be able to understand how magical it is for you. You’ll even dream about becoming a flight attendant (as well as psychologist, artist, militar, diplomat or Lara Croft).

Your first turning point will happen soon, while living in Mallorca, and I should tell you, again, to take time to accept things as they’ll come. Don’t fight against what you can’t change. Your parents won’t live happily ever after and you can’t force them to love each other. It’s not fair. Love is not an obligation. Even for parents. Specially for parents.

From your new-brand human status until you are 14 years old you will live between Argentina, Chile, Mexico and Spain. You will cry when saying goodbye to your father and then when saying goodbye to your mother. You will gradually, and unconsciously, learn to not feel attached to places nor people. That’s ok too. Don’t blame yourself and enjoy your crying.

One day, when you are 14, your father will tell you that he has been assigned to a position abroad and you’ll be completely responsible for what your life will become. It will be up to your 14 years old self to choose whether going to live to Argentina with your mother or going to live to Morocco with him.

Can you imagine your 15 years old self studying Arabic at school, being called blonde monkey by your Arabic teacher or experiencing Ramadan with your friends?

Can you imagine your 17 years old self travelling Rabat - Madrid - Buenos Aires - Salta, alone? Your parents will teach you to be independant and you’ll learn a lot from fear little bird!

You will always ask your father for help with your homework but he’ll always tell you to do it by yourself ‘’because he won’t be forever with you’’. You will get reaaaaally frustrated but you will develop a resourceful personality. Don’t be so hard on him, boring teenager.

After 4 years in Morocco you will come back to your city, as your Identity Card says. Sometimes life needs to slow down a little so you can get perspective and digest what it has been going on until now... Be patient.

During these years, you will travel to Canada for 8 months and, do you know what? One morning, you’ll find yourself sitting at a table with other 11 people of 10 different nationalities and you’ll realize that you are able to naturally find the necessary resources to get along with the spiritual Jordanian guy, the friendly religious Mexican girl but also with the nicely serious German guy, the funny Korean girl (your ‘’mushroom’’, as you will call her later), or the underage rebel Brasilien girl as well.

Oh, sorry, I almost forget… get ready to dance ‘’Macarena’’ and ‘’Gangnam Style’’ in front of all the students (more than 100, but I don’t want you to get nervous yet). And why will this ever happen? Because of you! You’ll be a Students Ambassador for the school and you’ll do whatever it takes to make people feel comfortable and help them have a good time while being far from their homes.

You will never have the ''far from home'' feeling, by the way. Kind of weird, to be honest.

You’ll be fired too. And it needs to happen. Don’t be ashamed, you must experience it in order to realize what you don’t want your life to be like. So. Next move.

At this point of your life you are healthily addicted to change, but you have learnt to take the best of it. Some people (and companies) will get scared but don’t worry, not everybody can understand. Keep it in mind, Albita: that’s the way you have grown up, with all the good and the not so good aspects of it.

You’ll struggle because you will change your mind very often, but this is just another consequence and it can’t be undone. So I must repeat, enjoy your differences and don’t worry about time. Don’t be scared of your feelings, benefit from your sensitivity and listen to your intuition. You’ll end up in the right place, at the right time. Always. A learning process is waiting for you every step.

And that’s everything I can tell you so far because I am still trying to figure out our (professional) path. Despiste all, I haven’t lived that much yet...

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Welcome, chaotic brave young lady, to your own adventure.

PS. Tell mama how much you love her every chance you have.