okay, after all
I sent out a mass text to a few close friends saying that I’m leaving traditional social media and asked for their permission to be mentioned in future blog entries. I’m still yet to provide them my blog link, which honestly made me a bit conscious and reread previous posts.
I’ve talked about hating my writing soon after publishing them, but this conscious rereading made me realize that my older posts (around 2022) weren’t so bad after all. They weren’t perfect, but they were decent — and arguably better than how I write now.
I had the same feeling about how I view myself. I constantly think about how the younger me was so much smarter, braver, and more capable. I jokingly refer to her as “pre-mental illness Rye” which I know is less funny than harmful.
Even old photos of myself would tell me something similar. Back in grade school, I used to make it a point to not wear jeans (because I hated how my thighs looked in them). But seeing old pictures nowadays, my body was perfectly normal. It’s even more fit than I am today.
These days I feel like moving forward with my back facing the future. I keep looking behind, not with regret but with yearning. I experience nostalgia but I miss my old self more than anything else. They say you’re only ever really competing with your (old) self. I feel like I never win.
Instead of the cliché “writing to your past self with what you know now”, I wish she could help me figure things out.
How can a person know everything at eighteen
But nothing at twentytwothree?
Nothing New, Taylor Swift ft. Phoebe Bridgers
I have no resolution for this. Yet. Perhaps in about four more years I’ll look back (will I ever stop looking back?) and think that this, among other writings I’ve published around this time, was okay, after all.