A Letter to My Ten-Year-Old Self

I cannot imagine life to be different than what it has become. I want to ask myself - what would 10-year-old Sasha think? At that point, I had just moved to a new school and wasn’t making a lot of friends. I left behind a group of people that I was getting closer with, albeit later on in life I'm glad I wasn’t with those people. I think life kind of ended up where it should be.

This school was so much different than the other one - smaller, all these kids grew up together and here I was, coming into already formed groups. I always felt like I was never really liked, it was kind of confirmed when kids wouldn't want to play with me and would tell me to my face that they thought I was bossy or made fun of me. So in my previous school when I felt like I was finally being accepted by people who were “popular” I had to leave - start fresh. Back to the beginning.

Throughout my school years, I didn’t really fit in. Every time I felt like I made a new friend I would hear something about myself and how they would mock me behind my back. Make fun of me or talk about how weird I was. I never really understood why people would be so cruel. I tried to ask my mom if I could go live with my dad’s family in BC. I just wanted to run away from it all. I didn’t understand why I was never really liked. I felt like every time someone was nice to me they would get in "trouble" or made fun of and that distanced them from me.

I remember this one time, I thought I made a friend in class. We were watching a movie and she seemed like she had watched it before, so I talked about the ending. Later on that week, I heard through a grapevine that she was telling everyone I spoil movies and I just talked the whole time and how I was so annoying. Or this other girl that I thought was a great friend of mine would purposely not tell me about parties just so that she wouldn’t have to show up with me.

It was lonely.

I was lonely.

I didn’t feel like I had any friends. It is tough to walk in a world where you feel like you walk alone. Like people that you meet just try to constantly keep you down below their level. To put so much trust and faith in them - give them your all and you’re used as a shoulder for them to step on to go up a proverbial social ladder. That’s what it felt like.

I thought as I became an adult I wouldn’t have to deal with it. I would get a hand up rather than a foot down on me. But just as we are children, in adulthood people take advantage of the light in the world. If you shine you can attract the most darkest of people. I’m not saying everyone in my life is darkness, I have a lot of other lights now but it still attracts dark.

I think about how someone can interact with one person versus others. How we can take advantage of someone in one friendship and beg to be seen in others. People are messy. Is that what people sense in others, a plea to be seen? To have their light be seen? Can someone’s darkness just be so strong that when they look at a person it overpowers their light? I think so.

I know we’re not meant to be friends with everyone - we can’t be. Some people in life aren’t meant to be around forever. But, what happens when the dark of someone else snuffs out the light in others?

I think about how the light in me was covered so easily by others. How my light was used. I have struggled for so long with confidence. I tend to put up a front and portray a big personality, often getting told I'm intimidating. But really, I’m still working on my fawning response. I can’t help but reflect right now on times when I let other people use my light in a way that benefited them more than me. And, how now looking at my 10-year-old self I can say, let them use your light, it won’t be forever. Your light will become so bright that it will guide you to a new direction and you’ll be happier. Your light will become so bright that the darkness will break and you will shine.

Now you’re probably thinking - Sasha that’s a terrible thing to say to your 10-year-old self, “Let them use your light”. You’re not wrong, but you're not fully right. There is no right or wrong answer. You just have a choice.

You can choose to accept what has happened and move forward with learning and knowledge from things, or you can choose to sit in pain. I’m ok if you sit in your pain, it really is your choice. But, I don’t recommend that you stay there for long, the darkness will consume you and soon enough you’ll extinguish your own light.

---

To my Sweet Marie,

I want to start by saying how proud I am of you. You’re a little spitfire and you’ll never lose that part of you - hold on to it. You don’t know what’s coming in life, and I’m not going to tell you because I want you to always have the ability to choose. There will people who take it from you and I don’t want to be one of them.

What I can offer you is love. You are going to have some choices to make, and others are going to make choices that are out of your control. I want you to remember that you cannot control who steals your light but you can control how you move and react.

Oh my gosh, girl, you are loved. You are loved by people who you don’t think do, you are loved by people that you don’t really know. And people love you right now before you or they know - it’s coming. This light that you have inside of you is strong. There are going to be people in this world who are going to try and snuff it out because it shines too bright for them and they are afraid of it. It won’t feel like they are afraid, but they are. They don’t know what you do with it because that’s how bright and different it is. There will come a time when you will find others whose light is just like yours or very similar. And, you are going to ignite the light in others but just know that you make it through everything.

Your light survives and actually grows stronger.

You have a purpose in this world that you will come to understand one day. I don’t want to tell you now because like I said I want to allow you the right to choose still. There are a few paths down this road when you could have an opportunity to have a different life than the one I led, but if you choose the same paths I took, which are rocky and hard, your light will not go out.

I know that’s what you love about yourself, you know it’s in there. Hold onto it, my little love. It’s so wild and fierce that people will take some. They will use it to spark light in their dark or just take it but know that it will never extinguish and you will learn how to protect it later.

Just continue to hold onto the light, everything will work out.

---