melancholy

A Letter Everyone Should Write To Their 20 Year Old Selves

Portrait by Erik Jones

Dear 20,

I know you’re terrified, homeless and broke, dependent on the kindness of strangers. You’re probably hiding in a public bathroom as we speak, gasping for air like a fish thrown out of water, heart beating out of control, questioning your sanity and why you can’t take the bus on some days or even leave your dorm room on others.

It’s been five years already, and I’m sure that you’re wondering if we’ve done well, if we’ve found love, stability and fortune, if we’ve found success. I’m sorry to disappoint you baby girl, but we’ve lost it all. Or rather, given it all up. But I need you to trust me when I tell you that it was all done by choice. You’ve cut the strings with seamless precision. You’ve done it because you couldn’t afford losing yourself, so you lost everything else instead, and I’m proud of you for doing that. When I look at all the people crushed under the weight of things that are no longer helping them flourish, all in the name of righteousness or logic, I can see that we’ve made the right choice.

You, my love, have been reborn, and this time you will decide what to grow into.

It still hurts a little, the pain you’ve accumulated over the past five years, but I thank you for realising that it’s not yours to carry anymore. Yesterday I revisited the cabinet where it has all been archived, neatly sorted into categories; remorse, self-loathing, anxiety, doubt, fear. I gazed at all of them triumphantly; they are no longer part of you, part of us. One day you will forget where they are, and all those empty spaces where they used to dwell will be filled with luscious gardens. You’re a fertile ground kid, are you aware of that yet? Of all the beauty that can grow inside of you? Beauty that was never recognised, that was dismissed, abused, misused and discarded. Do you know that it was all done to you in fear? No? You’ll see. Five years time is closer than you think, just blink twice and meet me at the debris of this fortress we’ve been building.

Rejoice in its destruction and dance naked by my side around the fire that we have set to it. They will hear our intoxicated laughs and they will know that all their efforts to break us were in vein. We’re invincible.

But above all, I want you to know that you are loved. And if you stand still, listen to the silence of your mind and peer into the darkness of nothingness, you will feel it. Flowing harmoniously through your extremities is eternity, the all and the nothing, and that is where you come from and to where you shall return. And it loves you, unconditionally, so embrace it, embrace this nothingness because at the center of all things is void. Do not fear it and to not seek to fill it, people who are always seeking get trapped by the pursuit. So seek not and it will all come to you at the right moment. Envision it, call for it, work for it, but do not run after it. Trust me little one, after all I am older and therefore wiser.

Finally, and this is very important, there is nothing fucking wrong with you.

So stop chewing your lips bloody trying to find answers because there are none. There is you, there is what you keep, what you shed off and what you replace it with, no right and no wrong. Love yourself, with everything you have to offer. Be an open vessel and love will flow into you.

Oh, how I wish I could peer into your autumn eyes and kiss your lips, stroke you hair and take you out for a drink. I have so much to tell you. But for now, happy 25th birthday kiddo, can’t wait till we speak again.

Love, 25

Submitted to ArtParasites bTania Shoukair

Take a peak at Erik Jones´ Technicolor portraits of melancholy women, obstructed by geometrical forms, as if they are lost in structures they never wanted to wear.

Courtesy of Eric Jones

Courtesy of Eric Jones

 

Courtesy of Eric Jones

Courtesy of Eric Jones

 

Courtesy of Eric Jones

Courtesy of Eric Jones

 

Courtesy of Eric Jones

Courtesy of Eric Jones

 

Courtesy of Eric Jones

Courtesy of Eric Jones

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